SCRANTON — When he left the Air Force, Michael L. Brown never imagined a career in health care, much less running entire hospitals.
“Somewhere along the way, my life changed,” said the new chief executive officer at Regional Hospital of Scranton and Moses Taylor Hospital.
“There’s a higher authority that had a plan for me that was different from my own,” he said.
After only 58 days on the job, the Columbus, Ohio, native took on his first annual public board meeting before the boards of both hospitals Wednesday. He dropped clues that he’s wasted no time studying nearly every corner of both Scranton hospitals and planting deep roots in the community.
On his desk, he’s got a United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties donation pledge form. On the small conference table by the window, there’s a thick folder from the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce.
He wants to know Scranton’s Mayor-elect Paige Cognetti and the city’s first responders.
At his most recent post, Brown led Illinois’ largest Catholic health system, Amita Health.
But he started his civilian career as a firefighter and pursued a nursing degree to help train paramedics. He later left firefighting to become a full-time nurse.
He earned a Master of Business Administration degree in organizational leadership and management and took his first executive job in 1996 at a for-profit hospital.
In the late 1990s, he took a special assignment as deputy managing director, upgrading three military hospitals and building another in the United Arab Emirates.
With grown children and grandchildren living in Virginia, moving closer to them was a key part is why he and his wife, Sue, packed up from their home in Northern Illinois and moved to Moosic.
He sees technology, in particular robots and artificial intelligence, as a next frontier in health care. Advances in the operating room mean procedures that once took a week-plus to recover from now take mere hours.
When Brown left nursing school, gallbladder surgery immobilized patients for up to 10 days.
“Now, we put you underneath a robot, take it out and you’re gone in three hours.”
Balancing computers and the human side of health care could be one of his greatest challenges.
“We are always going to have hands by the bedside,” he said. “We still need doctors and nurses and technologists.”
Brown replaces interim CEO Ron Ziobro, who stepped up after former CEO Justin Davis resigned in 2018.
He assumes the top seat at both hospitals amid uneasy times for Commonwealth’s parent company, the for-profit Community Health Systems based in Franklin, Tennessee.
The Commonwealth network includes the two Scranton hospitals, as well as Wilkes-Barre General, First Hospital in Kingston and Tyler Memorial in Tunkhannock Twp.
CHS once was the nation’s largest for-profit health system. Over the last several years, it sold off hospitals and subsidiary health systems in an effort to pay down close to $15 billion in debt.
Since 2017, CHS has unloaded 53 hospitals.
“They’ve made progress, but they’re still not looking great,” said Dennis Shea, Ph.D., a Penn State health policy and administration professor. “I would expect a lot of pressure from the top down to improve the finances of the individual hospitals.”
Earlier this year, CHS Chief Executive Officer Wayne T. Smith said the company would quit divesting by the end of 2019; however, rumors persist that UPMC, the health system affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, would acquire one, some or all of Commonwealth Health’s hospitals.
Brown quickly dispatched any suggestion he was hired to oversee such a sale. CHS hired him to run hospitals, not sell them.
Without writing it off entirely, he also suggested a multi-million-dollar expansion plan to connect Moses and Regional announced in 2017 is kaput. After buying up just about all the land between the hospitals, Commonwealth promised an $80 million medical campus to be completed next year.
“To be perfectly honest with you, nobody’s shown me what the actual 2020 plan was,” he said.
He challenged whether the capital projects, once applauded as a major investment for the city, would still be appropriate amid a rapidly changing health care landscape.
The capital project was one part of the plan, but he’s more concerned with strengthening service lines, for example heart and vascular care at Regional and mom and baby care at Moses Taylor, which has the county’s only neonatal intensive care unit.
“If we can’t manage the quality and safety side, we are going to fail,” he said.
His emphasis on quality and safety already made an impression for his board members.
“He brings what I call fresh eyes,” said Daniel West, Ph.D., a University of Scranton health administration and human resources professor and Moses Taylor board member. “He’s very focused on quality service delivery, quality outcomes, very concerned about patient safety.”
Dr. Frank Kolucki, obstetrics chairman at Moses Taylor, called him a “champion for quality and safety.”
“He comes from a nursing and a first responder background, and that part of his person shines through in his management style,” he said. “I think he’s the right guy for the job.”
Contact the writer: joconnell@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9131; @jon_oc on Twitter