HJAR Nov/Dec 2022

DIALOGUE 12 NOV / DEC 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS   Dianne Hartley, Editor Thank you, Larry, for adding this to your schedule today. Tell us a little about yourself and about Washington Regional. Larry Shackelford, FACMPE Well, I am actu- ally from Northwest Arkansas — grew up here. After college at the university, I took a finance track, worked for about six years in public accounting, and did lots of work in two industries — banking and healthcare — and started my first healthcare job at Fay- etteville Diagnostic Clinic in the early ‘90s and have been in the Northwest Arkansas healthcare market ever since. Washington Regional started as a county hospital in the 1950s. We’re currently an independent nonprofit health system, locally owned, locally governed (which means we’ve got a board of 10 members who also live in Northwest Arkansas), and have grown into a large health system. We moved to the North Hills Medical Park about 20 years ago and have doubled the size of our campus in that 20-year period and have also doubled the number of people that work withWashington Regional during that timeframe as well. Editor How would you describe the hospital’s culture? Shackelford I would say that our culture starts with being organized as a locally gov- erned, locally managed health system. Com- ing through COVID, one of the things I think that we learned about ourselves is that we are capable of being agile, of being able to find if there are problems or opportunities and how to best meet those. And our cul- ture is in our mission, which is to improve everyone’s health in Northwest Arkansas. It is something we focus on every day. That’s probably, as I’m out and about, the thing that I hear most often — our people and their mission focus. Everything we do as a health system, we try to be certain matches and aligns with that mission. Editor What enticed you to enter the healthcare field? Shackelford It gave me an opportunity to take the finance skills that I had and apply them in a way that was very meaningful — that idea of meeting needs to improve the health of those that we serve and to do it in a way of being good stewards of the resources we have. What I find helps me each day in life is really thinking about that overriding, overall mission. Editor You moved from group practice administration to hospital administration. What surprised you most about making that jump? Shackelford It was very meaningful to look at that nonprofit mission of how do we, at the end of the day, work to improve over- all health? In a private practice, for-profit system, you do good work and you take very good care of people, but at the end of the day, you have to be able to have margin in everything you do or that work can’t be done. As a part of a nonprofit health sys- tem, we have a goal and try to achieve an overall positive margin, but every day, we do things that we know don’t cover the cost; we do them because they’re the right thing to do. And for the privilege of not paying income taxes, we have the capability and the capacity to take care of all people. Again, it’s that mission focus that I have enjoyed very, very much. Editor That must make you feel good at the end of the day. Shackelford It does, it absolutely does. Editor We have a luxury now of assessing the trial-by-fire the COVID-19 pandemic brought upon the world, our community, and your hospital. How did Washington Regional’s team hold up, and what did you learn as a CEO going through the pandemic?