Vincent J. McCorkle developed an appreciation for customer service and attention to details while working for a radiologist in his hometown as a teen.
That doctor opened the door to McCorkle’s future career in health-care administration by inviting him to work inside the practice in Wilmington, Del., after being impressed with the way the teen cut the practice’s lawn.
In the years that followed, the Greek-born doctor taught McCorkle that the little things mattered — everything from promptly shoveling the walkway first thing in the morning after a snowy night to regularly replacing aging magazines in the waiting room.
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So when McCorkle started his new role as president and chief executive of Akron General Health System this month, he arrived at 6 a.m. to greet hospital staffers as they finished their overnight shifts or arrived for the new day.
As he learned early, every person within an organization plays a role in its success.
”I’m one of these people who are very fortunate,” he said. ”I don’t have to work for a living. I enjoy what I do. I believe that health care is a calling. It’s more than a job. And every person here makes a difference.”
McCorkle, 58, arrives with the stated goal of accelerating the improvements at Akron General Health System, one of the county’s largest employers with about 5,700 workers.
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McCorkle, a veteran non-profit health-care executive from Massachusetts, succeeds Alan Bleyer, who retired last year. Michael Rindler, a national health-care consultant, was Akron General’s interim leader for the past year.
When Rindler took over, the health system was trying to rebound from financial troubles through revitalization efforts that initially included job cuts but also focused on improved performance.
Last year, the health system posted a 1.4 percent positive margin on operating revenue of $553.4 million after losing money the previous year.
During his time as the leader of Sisters of Providence Health System in Springfield, Mass., McCorkle navigated that state’s health-care reform while still leading the organization to a healthy 8.5 percent profit margin last year.
In an interview with the Beacon Journal, he talked about what brought him to Akron General and his plans for the health system’s future.
Q: What made you decide to leave your former position and come to Akron?
A: I was starting to look in terms of taking my learnings and experiences and kind of hoping to have a capstone for my career. And this is it.
I can’t say that I ever thought about coming to Akron, Ohio, before, but when I came here and met members of the board, the physicians, the management team, I got hooked early on. Akron, from a community standpoint, kind of has the look and feel of the community I grew up in, so I felt very much at home. The people here are incredibly warm and engaging.
Q: What are your initial goals?
A: You really have to do a couple things simultaneously. There are what I’ll call the ”transactional” things you have to do. We are operating a very large, complex health system, and we have to do that incredibly well. We have an obligation to our community to do it as effectively and as efficiently as we can. . . . At the same time, there’s going to be a huge transformation in health delivery. So at the same time, we’re transforming our organization and creating that future.
Q: Do you think Akron General is heading in the right direction financially?
A: I think Michael Rindler coming in as an interim covered a lot of ground very, very quickly and positioned the organization. My goal is to accelerate that. . . . It’s a lot of attention to details and when you put systems and processes in place, not to let them drift back.
I didn’t invent this saying, but I’m very fond of it: ”Culture eats strategy.” I’m not a big one on mandating things and mandating change but really having a participatory process where people essentially have skin in the game and become committed to it.
Q: Are you assembling a new leadership team?
A: We’re doing a national search for chief financial officer. We are recruiting for a president for our foundation. We have just recruited a new physician leader for our physician group. My goal is to attract people for the organization we aspire to be — people who want to serve, people who have a conscience, are compassionate and committed.
Q: In the past year, there’s been an effort to have more physicians involved with hospital leadership. Will that continue?
A: There are these pretty strong undercurrents of transformation that are going to be happening in health care, driven in large part by national reform. I think coming from Massachusetts I got to see it a little more viscerally. I really believe that we need more involvement from clinicians to make good decisions in terms of what we do now, what we’re going to do in the future, and how we’re going to get there.
I’ve made a commitment to the physicians here of doing that. They’re going to be involved with strategy. They’re going to be involved with how we prioritize what we do. . . . I think it’s a critical success.
Q: Do you think it’s important to work with community partners?
A: There’s always a balance. I, as the CEO, have a fiduciary responsibility for Akron General Health System. But I also have the fiduciary responsibility for the health of our community — and define ”health” broadly.
As an example, . . . in the community where I left, less than one half of the children who started public high school graduated. That’s not good for the health of the community. So we’d be working with educators, city officials, even state officials to say, ”We need a dramatic shift here, because we cannot tolerate this.”
Another example might be working with physicians and clinical staff to say, ”How do we assure the best clinical outcomes for patients who come here? And let’s set some really bodacious goals for ourselves — really bodacious — so that we might say, ”How are we ever going to do that?” But if we don’t set those goals, we’re never going to get there. Incremental progress or even game-changing progress to get there might make a big difference.
An example might be: I don’t think if you come to a hospital you should fall and have an injury. Perhaps we’re going to set a goal — and I think we will — of zero tolerance of falls with injury.
Q: How do you view competition in the region?
A: I invited [Summa President and Chief Executive] Tom Strauss over and he’s come and joined me. We’ve already talked in terms of areas where potentially the organizations can collaborate and areas where it’s probably not as likely to collaborate. But I think I can say without a doubt both organizations are committed to the health of this community.
Q: Do you think it’s important to have competing health systems in this community?
A: I do. A lot of times you look and say, ”Well, if you have one, you eliminate duplication.” And it’s kind of a seductive rationale. But if you look at communities where it has happened, what typically happens is there’s a temporary dip [in costs] and then a climb. I think I did my homework pretty well. If you look at Akron and the surrounding communities, you look at the density of the population, you look at the age of the population, the aging of the population, there is going to be the need for the capacity of two health systems. And, quite frankly, I think you get better clinical quality, better service excellence, when you have that.
Cheryl Powell is a health reporter for The Akron Beacon Journal, the daily newspaper in Akron and a syndication partner of MedCity News.
