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Chuck Elliott's 10 years as hospital chief: big strides in patient care and the financials  Chuck Elliott was majoring in political
science at Furman University when he spent a semester of
independent study in the "planned community" of
Columbia, Maryland. He was assigned to work with the
area's HMOs --- the acronym for Health Maintenance
Organizations, an emerging movement within health-care
management in the 1970s.That experience headed him toward a 43-year career in hospital administration that came to a close this week when he retired as president and CEO of Johnston Health after 10 years in charge of hospitals in Smithfield and Clayton. What a productive 10 years it has been. "We strengthened our financial picture, our clinical outcomes have improved, and so has patient satisfaction," Mr. Elliott summed up his work here. His list of accomplishments since 2009 includes these points: • Completed expansion of patient services with a second hospital at Clayton. • Led Johnston's hospitals through "an affiliation strategy" that resulted in the current joint venture with the UNC Health Care System.  • Oversaw a $144-million expansion of facilities in Smithfield (pictured here) that was completed "on time and under budget." • "Totally reorganized" financial operations with new personnel and practices, improving collection of payments for services and a doubling of earnings in a single year. • Put in place a "productivity system" that reduced expenses. • Developed hospital-based "physician provider agreements" that enabled an expansion of services. As a result of those efforts and more, Johnston Health has achieved recurring national recognition --- "Grade A" in patient safety from a rating agency known as Leapfrog and a 4-Star rating from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Back to Mr. Elliott's early years: After he got that degree in political science at Furman, he went on to earn a master's degree at Georgia State University in his hometown of Atlanta and later a master's in business administration at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, where he was stationed for a time as a U.S. Army hospital administrator. He gave Uncle Sam four years of active military service in 1976-1980 as payback for an ROTC scholarship that helped him through college. While preparing for his military service at the Army's Officer Candidate School, Mr. Elliott first met his wife Deborah, an OCS classmate who went on to fulfill her military obligation as a nurse --- a profession she continued after Army service. Mr. Elliott, meanwhile, served as a Medical Service Corps officer in the Army Reserve until 1998, when he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He began his civilian service in 1980, first as CEO of a 25-bed hospital in Liberty, Kentucky for two years, then as administrator of a 55-bed hospital in Elberton, Georgia for two years, assistant administrator at Athens (Georgia) Regional Medical Center for three years, and administrative associate at Lloyd Noland Hospital & Health Centers in Birmingham, Alabama for three years. In 1989 He joined Quorum Health Resources, a national hospital-management company, serving as CEO of a Quorum-run hospital in Beaufort, S.C. more than six years and then as Group Vice President overseeing Quorum's 11 hospitals in North Carolina, including county-owned Johnston Memorial here in Smithfield, from January 1996 till March 2002. At that point he left Quorum to work as CEO of Rowan Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, N.C --- a position he held till late in 2008. In early 2009 he moved to Denver to work as interim CEO at Colorado Orthopedic and Surgical Hospital. Rejoining Quorum Health, he was assigned to Smithfield in late 2009 as CEO of Johnston Memorial Hospital, which in 2014 morphed into the present-day organization including the Smithfield and Clayton hospitals under the banner of UNC Johnston Health. "Things were rough here when I came," Mr. Elliott recalled a couple of days before his last day on the job Wednesday. "Financially we were in trouble, having just built the new facility at Clayton," he noted. "We took on a lot of debt (but) strategically it was the right thing to do." During the worst of those years, in 2010, Johnston Health had a loss of $7 million despite gross revenues approaching $180 million, he recalled. (Today, annual revenues are projected at $250 million with an "operating margin" of $3.7 million.) Mr. Elliott said changes in billing practices and the "collection process" turned the financial tide, and he gives much of the credit to Chief Financial Officer Eddie Klein, who joined the staff six months after Mr. Elliott arrived. As a result, Quorum recognized Johnston Health as "the turnaround hospital of the year" among its managed facilities, and the next year as "most improved hospital of the year," Mr. Elliott noted. The folks here at home have also recognized the progress made by Johnston Health under Chuck Elliott's leadership. He was named "Citizen of the Year" in 2017 by the Smithfield-Selma Chamber of Commerce. As he steps aside from his duties, Johnston Health is moving into a new phase of its relationship with UNC Health Care as administrative functions are being combined with UNC REX, the long-standing Raleigh hospital. REX's Tom Williams is taking over as interim CEO of Johnston Health while a "national search" continues for a permanent successor to Mr. Elliott. As for the retiring CEO, he and his wife will continue to reside in Smithfield until early in 2020, when they plan to relocate to a second home they already own at Isle of Palms near Charleston, S.C. He has no plans at this time to continue working in hospital administration. Whether that means he's fully retired remains to be seen.  Visible in this photo of the
Smithfield hospital's campus from the parking
lot off Bright Leaf Boulevard are remnants of
Johnston Memorial's original five-story
structure, a glassy two-story addition done in
the early 1980s, and in the background on the
right a portion of the newer "patient tower"
that fronts the parking lot off Hospital Road.
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