Health-Care Headmaster

Louisville, Aug 01, 2005 by Sekula, Robyn Davis

Recently retired Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services president and CEO Hank Wagner's 25-year tenure at the helm of Jewish was all about growth. The 62-year-old oversaw the organization's metamorphosis from a single hospital with 250 beds into a health-care company with 1,200 beds at approximately 60 facilities and more than 6,000, employees. Wagner also set out with other city leaders create a downtown medical center that has become the single place in Kentucky where patients can go for everything from having a baby to receiving an artificial heart. No matter how specialized the medical need, the bundle of hospitals and specialized clinics in the center of the city are likely to supply the treatment.

Wagner was known for perfectionism and a style that could be demanding and intimidating. But this intensity also helped him accomplish much during his three decades at Jewish, including overseeing some major medical milestones such as major advances in organ transplantation and some of the earliest forays into artificialheart surgery. He invested much of his considerable energy in civic duties as well, heading fund-raising campaigns for the United Way and the Fund for the Arts, among other volunteer duties.

His last official day in the president's office was July 15. He now plans to travel, see some art exhibits in other cities, and then perhaps accept a few corporate board appointments. "Nothing that requires an alarm clock," he says.

Louisville Magazine interviewed Wagner recently about his career and the changes he's seen in health care in his 32 years at Jewish.

Louisville Magazine: What made you decide to take the job at Jewish Hospital and come here?

Hank Wagner: Like most young people starting out wanting to get into health-care management, I went to a graduate school that specialized in that. I went to Duke University. They had promoted the notion that their graduates should seek an opportunity in a major medical center, and so I went to Cleveland and worked with University Hospitals, which was considered a top-10 medical center. I logged eight years there and decided that I'd been in Cleveland long enough and generally wanted to go south. (Executive vice president of Jewish) was the first job that popped up and I thought I was generally headed in the right direction.

LM: What was Jewish like in 1973?

HW: By and large, most all hospitals in the early '70s were pretty quiet operations. What we were about to experience was the economic explosion of Medicare and Medicaid, fueling health-care growth.... I didn't know it at the time, but Jewish was wonderfully positioned to take advantage of these circumstances. We had at that time world-class hand and microsurgery. We were the first hospital in Kentucky to do a kidney transplant, in the late '60s. We were the first hospital in Kentucky to do open-heart surgery in about 1970, and that caused us to be the first hospital in Kentucky to have a critical-care nursing unit and a cardiac catheterization lab. The biggest problem I faced in 1973 at Jewish was how to manage three open-heart surgical cases a week. Now we do 35 or 40 a week. I didn't know that I was sitting on top of a medical rocket ship that was about to take off.

LM: What would you consider to have been your first major undertaking here?

HW: One of the first things we did was to label this location as the Louisville Medical Center. My memory says that (Louisville Metro Mayor) Jerry Abramson was very helpful in coining that label. That was the first major initiative.... When you consider the School of Medicine, the University Hospital, the Kosair Children's Hospital, the Norton Hospital and Jewish Hospital, we have put together the very best medical address in Kentucky. That's important because Kentucky is a rural state and most cities in Kentucky don't even have an eightstory building. Kentuckians have learned to come to the big city - or the Louisville Medical Center - for care that is simply not available in their local communities. That's what keeps the medical center healthy.

The next strategic step had to do with assembling a superior level of care. Each of the hospitals in the Medical Center has taken on a different role in doing that, so that each, in a partnership kind of way, is very good at something. Jewish is very good at organ transplantation.... Norton has become a superior location for obstetrics. Kosair is a superior location for pediatrics. University is a superior location for trauma and many other services. You can't have a Medical Center if you haven't assembled a level of services that are superior to what's available throughout the state. These high-tech services require high volumes (of patients) in order to grow into a leading-edge position.

LM: You seem to be saying that there has been a fair amount of cooperation among the downtown facilities operated by competing Louisville health-care providers.

HW: When it comes to the Medical Center, at a high level working toward these community-oriented goals, there has been a lot of cooperation. Jerry Abramson actually chairs the Louisville Medical Center Development Corporation board meetings. Jim Ramsey, as president of U of L, is the vice chair, and the CEOs of each of the three Medical Center hospitals are on the board. We're lucky enough to have another dozen high-profile community leaders sitting with us on that board. The president of Greater Louisville Inc. sits on that board. When you put all of that together, it's a testament to a lot of cooperation.