In April, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System named Mike Dorsey chief executive officer of Providence Medical Center and its sister institution, St. John Hospital in Leavenworth. Dorsey is well prepared for his new job, in that he’s been sitting in the same chair as interim CEO since October of last year. Prior to being chosen for that post, Dorsey was chief operating officer at St. Francis Health Center in Topeka, and before that COO at Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City.

     Ingram’s talked with Dorsey about his new responsi-bilities and the role his hospitals play in the changing communities they serve.   

What are your top priorities in your new position?

First, I’ve been working closely with our medical staff, nursing staff, allied health professionals and program managers to identify our strengths and to build on those, and then to identify areas where we need to expand or add services to better meet the health needs of our community. I know this is the kind of thing you’d expect me to say, but we really do have an outstanding staff.

At Providence, we’ve embarked on an exciting new $17 million building project that will create a new emergency department, a new breast health center, and we’ll be converting most of our semi-private rooms to private rooms.

At St. John, we’ve initiated an ambitious $65 million expansion project that will allow us to increase our inpatient capacity, add a significant number of private rooms and improve the range of our technological capabilities.    

 

 

How do the roles of your two institutions differ from one another and from those of the academic medical centers in the metropolitan region?

Well, Providence is larger and provides a wider range of more clinically and technologically sophisticated services than St. John, as is appropriate and necessary given our location in a more densely populated area. The needs are greater here. St. John is a community hospital. It’s a great community hospital, but the services a smaller community hospital provide are more limited in scope.

At neither institution will we seek to duplicate some of the higher level services offered by, say, Children’s Mercy, or at some of the area’s top trauma centers or burn units. At the same time we’re constantly acquiring newer technologies and capabilities to provide our patients and our com-munities with sophisticated advance clinical services of the highest quality.  

What are the biggest challenges confronting the nation’s health-care system?

Escalating costs. Technology has greatly improved the quality of care in this country, but it’s expensive. And the cost of pharmaceuticals keeps rising. Insurance costs are going through the roof. The challenge is keeping care affordable. There are no easy or simple solutions. The problem is that some people are being left behind because they can’t afford the care they need.