Lodi hospital CEO talks about COVID-19
In March, local health care and community leaders found themselves dealing with the unexpected: the novel coronavirus pandemic that spread quickly through the United States.
California and San Joaquin County worked quickly to try and “flatten the curve,” hoping to minimize the illnesses and deaths that the new virus related to SARS might cause. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued statewide stay-athome orders, and health providers worked quickly to roll out testing, gather protective gear for
The News-Sentinel spoke to
Adventist Health Lodi Memorial President and CEO Daniel Wolcott about his experiences as he faced the contagious illness head on and tried to mitigate the effects of an economic shutdown.
Q:
What is your background?
A:
I was born in the Napa Valley at what is now Adventist Health St. Helena. My father was a minister, and we moved around a lot during my growing up years. We lived just up in the foothills in San Andreas when I was very small and when I went away to school we were living in Red Bluff, all in Northern California.
I attended Southern Adventist University near Chattanooga, Tennessee where I earned a degree in business with an emphasis in marketing. I went on to Georgia State University, where I received a Master of Business Administration.
My wife and I have four beautiful children, one grandson and another grandbaby on the way.
Q:
What led you to your current position? Has it been what you expected?
A:
My first job in health care was in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
It was a small hospital that was managed as a joint venture between what is now called AdventHealth and Emory Healthcare. It was while I was working there that I attended Georgia State University.
From there we spent eight years in Florida working in revenue cycle, physician group administration and as a hospital campus administrator in what is now AdventHealth Volusia County.
In 2009, my family moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, where I was president/CEO of Takoma Regional Hospital (also managed by AdventHealth). It was while in Greeneville that I learned the value of partnering with community leaders to make longterm impacts through workforce development, economic development, tourism and business leadership.
In 2015 I joined Adventist Health to be the first president of the new affiliated Lodi Memorial Hospital (now Adventist Health Lodi Memorial).
My journey as a health care leader has been filled with amazing mentors, fulfilling relationship with physicians, leaders and passionate healthcare workers, and fulfilling opportunities to build high quality, cost effective and sustainable healthcare delivery that meets the community’s needs.
Q:
What is it like being in a leadership role during a pandemic?
Leadership in crisis is something that I learned a bit about in 2004 — the year I became a campus administrator in Florida. That year, a hurricane came through, causing us to have to evacuate our hospital. That hurricane then blew the roof of the hospital and we had three inches of water throughout 80% of the building. It took us five months and millions of dollars before we could restore services to our community.
This experience and a few others helped prepare me for this crisis. I’ve learned that crisis brings out the best in most people — especially health care workers who chose this profession because they care about people.
Leading during crisis requires three things:
1. We must remember our calling. I believe that health care workers are called — especially during a crisis — to be the backbone of our communities. This work is worthy of our best effort.
2. We must lead with compassion. Crises cause fear to rise — in ourselves, those we love and our community at large. When we lead with compassion, we remember that “perfect loves casts out fear.” When we love others (and ourselves) we will be able to do our best work and make the biggest impact.
3. Communication is essential. Often in crisis there are more things that we don’t know than that we do. This has certainly been true in this pandemic. Even as of today, there is more we don’t know about this virus than what we do know.
Leaders in this situation can be tempted to avoid communication, but that impulse is exactly opposite of the right thing to do. I like to say that “overcommunication” is the goal. I’m not afraid to be honest — especially about things I don’t know. Our team is much better off to have routine updates that set the expectation that things are changing rapidly, but that we will keep updating everyone along the way.
This is why we implemented daily update calls with opportunity for questions and answers early in the crisis. We also sent daily updates through email to every stakeholder. Early in the pandemic, I wrote an article on LinkedIn about leadership in crisis. You can find it at www.linkedin.com/pulse/t hree-cs-leading-crisisdaniel-wolcott.
Q:
What has been the biggest challenge you've faced over the past couple months?
A:
From the very beginning of this crisis, my primary concern has been for our health care team. At Adventist Health Lodi Memorial, we take our job to serve and protect this community seriously and I know that we can’t do that unless I have a healthy and complete team. This means that my primary job was to make sure our team was prepared and protected.
As the crisis extended, my job morphed into the role of chief communicator. I needed to make sure the team knew what was going on and how they could help.
More recently, my job has been much more difficult because as our revenues have fallen, I have had to ask some of our amazing health care team to go on temporary layoffs, work less hours, or be permanently laid off. This has been especially hard because our health care workers are the true heroes in this pandemic!
Q:
Have you found ways to relax and get away from the news when you're not working?
My family is important to me and I have been able to invest in them during this pandemic. I have two high school kids who are studying at home. I have been able to spend some good time with them. I have also tackled a couple of projects around the house that require physical work, which I enjoy because when I’m done with a project at home or in the yard, I can stand back and see what I accomplished.
Q:
What do you see happening in the future of this pandemic? Do you have advice for our readers going forward?
A:
I believe that our community will come out of this pandemic stronger than it was before. I believe the future is bright, but this crisis isn’t over yet, so we need to be patient, proactive and diligent.