His first day on the job, Steve Wolfe’s welcoming committee
consisted of a single labor attorney. He knew things were going
badly at Indiana Regional Medical Center before accepting the
role of president and CEO — market share was falling, patient
satisfaction was abysmal, and there was a daunting communication gap between management and employees — but he didn’t
expect to be confronted with such adversity as he stepped in the
door.
“It was clearly their plan before somebody could get in and
establish trust that they wanted to get right back to the second
vote,” he says of a second attempt at unionization, the first of
which had failed by a few votes the previous year. “We really just
made a plea to give us a chance, (but) we lost a close vote and
the union was formed.”
What really concerned Wolfe was the looming threat of a strike. A
fiercely adversarial culture, when combined with national rallying
calls for the whole nursing industry, led to a heated meeting that
would inevitably decide whether or not the health care provider’s
employees would hit the picket lines. But Wolfe was able to convince labor representatives not to strike.
“I think everybody was prepared for a strike, but fortunately, we
were able to avert it,” he says.
Having avoided near disaster and finally getting a chance to
catch his breath, the leader and former pharmacy director sought
to cure the medical center of its own toxic culture. He devoted
his first 100 days to the task, familiarizing himself with the nonprofit institution, identifying major areas in need of improvement, and then choosing benchmarks to help track and measure
progress.
Nearly a decade later, Indiana Regional Medical Center has
posted fiscal 2007 revenue of $107 million — up from $54 million
in fiscal 1999 — and has been named the best to place work in
Pennsylvania twice.
Here’s how Wolfe transformed the culture from one on the verge
of a strike to one of the best in the state.