Editor's note: This story was originally published in Health Care Headliners, a magazine meant to introduce the community to the people making a big difference in local health care. The doctors honored in the magazine come from nominations accepted by VEGAS INC.
By all accounts, Kimball Anderson inherited a headache when he took on the role of Southern Hills Hospital CEO in December 2009. But he had been a chief operations officer at two Utah hospitals prior to arriving in Las Vegas and was ready for the CEO test.
Southern Hills was relatively new, opening its doors in 2004, but it had gone through three CEOs before Anderson arrived and the fledgling enterprise was clearly struggling through the Great Recession.
“There was a lot of turnover in a short time. But I saw the opportunity and the potential. We had a beautiful facility and a good staff and I wanted to help Southern Hills reach that potential,” he said.
For the first six months, Anderson did a lot of listening. He evaluated the hospital and community needs. He held town hall meetings with staff and encouraged employees to come forward with suggestions.
“A lot of people came up with really good ideas that were focused on the patient experience,” he said.
From those suggestions, Anderson began implementing critical changes. He helped create a patient-family advisory council that invited patients back after they were discharged to tell the team where care excelled and what needed work. He also created a cultural competence committee that worked to ensure cultural and community sensitivity towards the area’s population.
He learned about the area’s senior population and also began to grow services around those needs. One of them was to bring greater access to Southern Hills’ orthopedic specialists and surgeons. He added 25 orthopedic beds in addition to a 14-bed psychiatric unit that has remained 95 percent full since opening, he says.
He is now adding another 46-bed orthopedic and spine unit that will be expandable to serve ICU patients and will also include dedicated oncology and Alzheimer’s care space. Since arriving, Southern Hills has received a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures honors several years in a row from the Joint Commission; in addition, the hospital and medical center also won the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for its Alzheimer’s disease program.
Community outreach
By its very nature, a hospital serves a community, but Anderson also saw ways Southern Hills could do more for the valley’s southwest region. One relationship he built was with the Las Vegas Metro’s Search and Rescue unit. He has supported the effort with fundraising and also has staffers involved the program.
The CEO has also reached out to area schools, like the West Career and Technical Academy as well as Bishop Gorman High School, to allow groups of students interested in health care careers to shadow staff and gain a glimpse into the workings of the hospital.
“We get comments from parents about how much they appreciate the opportunity to experience this,” he added. “It’s something I’m really proud of. … The students are top notch and very smart.”
Anderson also helped organize the hospital’s annual Hot Air Balloon Festival. Since 2011, the fundraising effort has helped raise more than $70,000 for local nonprofits, including Search and Rescue and scholarships through the Public Education Foundation for high school students looking to study health care in college.
With community initiatives in place and the hospital now on much more solid footing, the ride hasn’t always been smooth, Anderson admits; but the long-time Utah health care facility administrator is now a big fan of Southern Nevada.
“When I first got here they said this is where the hospitals are empty and the hotels are full,” he said. “This was the opportunity I chose and I have no regrets.”