Conway Regional’s new CEO a ‘servant leader’
Conway Regional’s new CEO a ‘servant leader’
Matt Troup once wished for a job where he could wear gym shorts to work every day, but as the new president and CEO of the Conway Regional Health System, he has to compromise: He just wears them to work out at the hospital fitness center.
Troup, 46, needs energy to keep up with everything he does in his position — not to mention being a husband and the father of four boys.
It’s Troup, pronounced “troop,” by the way, “like a Boy Scout troop,” he said with a laugh.
Troup starts his days at 4:30 a.m. by making coffee, then making the drive from Little Rock into Conway, where he started his job in August. He exercises at the Conway Regional Health and Fitness Center, then gets ready for work, which includes wearing a tie.
He’s at his desk by 7:30 a.m., but he doesn’t stay there.
Troup has instituted a couple of new
practices. He starts the day with a safety huddle, where department directors and administrators meet for about 10 minutes to talk about any safety concerns they have. Then he started the Sacred 60. He and the leadership team make rounds on patients and staff from 9-10 a.m. every day, because that’s what he said the focus should be on — the people.
“It’s the best part of my day,” Troup said. “That’s when you know you’re part of a team that’s making a difference in people’s lives.”
A native of Texas, he played football in high school, and he said his goal was just to be a jock.
“I never imagined doing anything but wearing gym shorts,” he said, laughing again.
He was the youngest of five children. His father, Ralph, drove a bus for the Dallas transit system, and his mother, Marian, was the executive assistant in the pediatric infectious disease division at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Troup’s mother took him to work with her during the summers. One of the physicians had land in Mena, and Troup said his family regularly went there on vacation. His parents have since bought the doctor’s property and are retired there.
He said his mother’s work was his introduction into health care.
“I always had an appreciation for medicine and for physicians,” Troup said.
He knew when he went to college at Texas A&M University in College Station that he wanted a role in the health care field. He received an undergraduate degree in business administration while working his way through school at a Tom Thumb grocery in Dallas. Troup met his wife, Melissa, in college, and they rode together back and forth to school on the weekends.
Troup earned a master’s degree in health care administration at Trinity University in San Antonio.
He said he first took a “deep dive” into health care while he was getting his degree at Trinity and worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas. He stayed on to help small and rural hospitals that were part of the system to get connected.
He was there for two different stints. He also served as chief operating officer at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and from there went to Florida as COO and site administrator at a trauma-level, 514-bed facility.
Troup said he and his wife — who home-schools their four boys — didn’t want to raise their children in Florida, and he got the opportunity to become a vice president of ancillary and support services at St. Vincent Health System in Little Rock.
“I knew it had good upward mobility,” he said.
In August, when the CHI St. Vincent Health System entered into a management agreement with the Conway Regional Health System, Troup became the CEO. He replaced Jim Lambert, who became CEO of the Arkansas Health Alliance, which was formed by the merger.
Troup said he looked at the 154-bed Conway hospital — including its 2014 Governor’s Quality Award report — and decided he wanted the job. St. Vincent doesn’t own the hospital, he said, but its management agreement gives Conway Regional more leverage — whether that’s buying supplies at a better price or sharing data to improve patient care.
“Conway will always be in front of our name,” he said.
Troup said he loves being a hospital CEO.
“I eat it up. It’s intellectually very stimulating. It’s got a people side of it where you can feel good about what you do,” he said. “I’m part politician. I’m part financial person, part mediator — I think that’s a fair word — but that’s the fun aspect. There is mutual ground.”
Troup said what he likes about his role is that it is the “confluence of a social good … with the practical aspects of having to run a business. I knew I could exercise my heart component in a business-savvy, intelligent way,” he said.
He doesn’t shy away from the obvious — Baptist Hospital is under construction just off the interstate in Conway.
“I think their coming to the market will do good things,” he said. Although Conway Regional staff and physicians weren’t complacent, he said, the hospital had not recruited physicians or challenged norms in ways it could.
“It was kind of a wake-up call about why we exist and what we do; [Baptist and Conway Regional] have different stories to tell,” he said. “We’ve got a proud 78-year history of serving this community in partnership with our staff, our physicians, our community.”
Although Troup said Conway Regional excels in most areas, he was open about what needs to be improved.
“One story we’ve struggled to tell is in our emergency department,” he said. “It has a great staff — competent, board-certified ER physicians.”
The ER had more than 42,000 visits last year, but it has only 16 treatment rooms. It has a fast-track system, albeit in a makeshift room.
Upgrading the emergency department is on his list, along with enhancing the primary-care base and growing the hospital “from a regional perspective,” he said.
Barbara Williams, chairwoman of the Conway Regional Health System Board of Directors, said Troup is the right man for the job.
“Matt has the mix of skills, knowledge, values and energy that Conway Regional needs for this period of rapid changes in health care, not only in Conway but also the nation,” she said. “On his first day of work, Matt hit the ground running and hasn’t stopped yet.”
Troup has described himself as a “servant leader.”
“I probably have a book or two on that,” he said, pointing in the direction of packed bookshelves across the room.
A servant leader “seeks to serve others before himself,” Troup said, and that’s what he strives to do.
“The essence of health care is about servant leadership,” he said. “You will not find anywhere in the world a more dedicated, committed workforce than health care.”
Troup’s servant heart extends to his religion. He and his family attend St. Andrews, an Anglican church in Little Rock, but he also serves a startup church at a low-income housing project in Little Rock.
“I’ve even preached a few times,” he said. “We bring church to them. It gets to the real essence of sharing the word of Christ with people who don’t look like you.”
He also helped build the Open Arms Clinic in Tanzania in 2011 while on a mountain-climbing trip with other Texas health care executives and doctors.
“It’s an incredible story of putting faith to work,” he said.
Troup said his wife of 23 years has helped make his achievements possible.
“Melissa is incredibly supportive of me and this ministry I call a career,” he said.
In his first six months on the job, he said, his priority has been to build and earn trust among the employees.
“I’ve been open, transparent, honest — vulnerable at times — with people so we can build trust. You can’t be an effective team without it,” he said.
“I want to instill in [employees] the confidence to believe that we’re going to win the day,” he said. “I get to motivate and centralize people around that message.”
Sounds like a coach — in a suit and tie.