Welcome to the 12th annual episode of H&H Impact. Today we have Mr. Michael Hassell, the CEO of Melissa Memorial out of Holyoke, Colorado. We’re excited to be with him and kind of learn about his leadership journey, the work that he’s doing there, not only at the hospital but across Colorado itself, and really get an insight on CEO leadership, what tomorrow holds. Uh, welcome Michael Hassell. Hey, Charles, good to be here.

It’s an oddly cold day in late May in Northeast Colorado. So rather be indoors talking to you than outside in the cold temps. Yeah, no doubt on the Eastern Plains, you’ve had quite a bit of different weather over the last few months. I know when we were there, it’s been in the teens, single digits this year, and then it’s been oddly warm like a day or two later. So no doubt this is Um, the weather patterns of those Eastern Plains there in Colorado, correct?

It’s been manic. It’s, uh, it’s spring one day, then it’s a deep winter the next day. Uh, you never know if it’s gonna snow. Uh, softball-sized hail occasionally. We had a nice little hailstorm.

It wasn’t quite that big the other day, but nice hailstorm the other day. They just keep you on your toes and wonder if your car’s gonna be okay. So just another day in the life in, uh, in Eastern Plains of Colorado. Nice. Well, you, in knowing your journey, and you and I have worked closely together for the last few years, have something in common.

We both started out in EMS. And so you’re, you’re in essence a clinical leader with that clinical-based understanding of the human body and how healthcare affects patient care. Um, you’re a paramedic, uh, you’re a, a leader. Um, you wanna talk a little bit about your leadership journey to how you got to this role? Sure.

So it, it did start out as a paramedic in a pretty busy system, uh, Orange County, uh, Florida, uh, Orlando area. Uh, I think at the time I was there, we would often, uh, hear that we were the third busiest EMS region in the country. Um, fortunate that I had a lot of good mentors along the way. Uh, you know, you talked about, uh, you mentioned we’d be talking about leadership style and that. I still remember going to, uh, to paramedic school and there was a quote on the wall.

Uh, Don Gillette was my, uh, instructor. Great guy, legend in Polk County, Florida. Um, they were at a see one, do one, teach one. And I think a lot of what I, I, I took from that course and what I, I try to act out in, you know, my day-to-day, you know, leadership style or activities. You know, you, you gotta see something to, to begin to understand it and you gotta immerse yourself and, and do it, uh, experience it, uh, for that deeper level of, uh, comprehension.

And then whenever you master something to the point where you can teach it and you’re trying to bring somebody along and, and pass down some of those, those, uh, you know, tidbits and, and the how-tos, you know, I think that’s when you start to sort of begin to master things. I don’t know that I’ve mastered a bunch of anything, but certainly aspire to, and it’s see one, do one, teach one. So that is a recurrent theme for me. Well, so you, you actually dove into patient care and then got promoted into more of a management style where you focused on a little bit of emergency medicine and some command and so forth. That was that next step out of Being a paramedic, correct?

Yeah. So, uh, I was with one of the last of the hospital-based EMS programs in Florida. There were only two of us left. Um, and what had- what happened is that our hospital was kind of sold or, or merged, if you will. Uh, it was all friendly, but they looked around for a partner.

They couldn’t get their compensation model. Uh, that PPS hospital couldn’t get compensated as a sole standalone., the same way the systems could. And so that, that system or the hospital I was attached to, uh, merged fully with Orlando Health and, um, you know, to enable, in order to see those higher, uh, you know, more higher margins, those higher and higher compensation. And, uh, Orlando Health at the time, uh, just didn’t want anything to do with, with, uh, 9/11, you know, 911 trucks on the road and that, yeah, the liability that comes with that. And, you know, I don’t think it’s something they necessarily had, had looked at or or fully understood that.

They believed that was, you know, the domain of somebody else. And so they made the decision that they weren’t going to, uh, to retain the paramedic program. And so we all began to scramble, try to figure out what does, what does life look like without, uh, you know, driving to the same place and hopping on a rig every day. And, uh, I’ll be eternally grateful. The, uh, the facilities department of that little hospital, seeing, oh gosh, We have things that still need to be done around here.

Can we, can we bring a couple of those paramedics on? Uh, some of the paramedics were able to make that transition into ER tech, uh, or onto the floor somewhere in the hospital. Uh, some opted to, you know, in Florida you can, you can parlay your paramedic patch into a nursing license, uh, with about a year’s study. So a lot of people jumped on a bridge program or, or had already completed a bridge program, decided to go and be nurses instead. Uh, but I was super fortunate.

I got to interview and, and, uh, was selected to become the emergency manager for the hospital.. And I remember when I walked in, the hospital had not had a, uh, in Florida you have to have a, a crosswalk and then a comprehensive emergency management plan, um, that has to be approved by the state. They had been out of compliance for a good bit. And my, my first job was really, uh, looking at the, from an emergency perspective, you know, what do we do if there’s a hurricane? What do we do if there’s a power failure?

What do we do if we have a mass casualty incident and we have, uh, you know, even not like a mortuary call out. And we had to go out and make all those, those arrangements, uh, memorandum of understanding, MOUs with those various providers and vendors. And, uh, you know, it was, it was a great, it was a great entry, um, you know, into, into the hospital. I got to see, got to understand things from a different perspective, certainly as the, uh, emergency manager, uh, for them. And then, uh, you know, gosh, I was just one of those guys that, uh, No matter what, no matter what came up, I always thought, you know, they say, well, we need somebody to run EVS.

And I’d say, well, gosh, how hard can that be? I’ll, I’ll, I’ll raise my hand. I’ll do that. By the way, running EVS is really hard. It’s a really difficult job.

It’s not, uh, not for the faint of heart. Uh, but just kept raising my hand and I volunteered for things. Um, you know, finally caught the eye of a, of a, of a good strong mentor that had, you know, walked the walk already. And, uh, I remember. Going to finish my master’s degree, got my MBA.

And I’m not so naive at the time. Um, you know, it was years ago now, but I just, I thought that once you got that and once HR knew that, you know, a couple of days they swing by your desk and they promote you, right? And that how that, isn’t that how that works? That’s exactly how it, one would think it should work. Unfortunately, not so much.

You know, I framed this thing, it’s hanging on the, on the, on the wall behind my cubicle. And I’m thinking, gosh, they must not know. So, you know, you go around telling people and, you know, I even had to learn that there’s a lot more to it than that. And the networking and the volunteerism when you’re positioned and, you know, showing up on time every day and staying late when you need to and getting those things done is really a lot more important. Certainly it is important, the education support.

You have to have the- it’s healthcare. You have to have the credential and, you know, and you certainly got to check the box, but, uh, a lot more to getting promoted and being a leader than just having the paper. And I teach that a lot now too. Uh, you know, folks ask me, what’s the, what’s the secret to your success? If there is one, and the answer is still, it’s still hard work, but when that didn’t work, I said, well, gosh, what do I, what do I need to do, um, to, to really, really jazz this up and really try to get somewhere and.

And, you know, I reached out to every senior leader in Orlando Health that I’d ever come across, probably half dozen, maybe 7 or 8 people that I reached out to, you know, email. And most I had to reintroduce myself to. I wasn’t on a first name basis with these folks. Orlando Health’s a pretty big organization. And, you know, to their great credit, and you think about, you know, giving back and that see one, do one.

Teach one, uh, motto. Every single one of the people that I reached out to said, absolutely, come on over. Most of them bought me lunch. Uh, they said, bring your resume, let’s talk about you. And these are folks that didn’t really know me.

I mean, I might have been in the same room with them, but they’d have no reason to know who I was. And, uh, you know, you started picking up tidbits and like, uh, you know, just bits and pieces of how to, how to try to put it together. And, and one in particular, um, a guy that would become my mentor and then I’ll talk about, you know, mentor to champion, how to convert that. Really important piece to know. But Rick Smith joined the organization as a chief operating officer from up in the panhandle of Florida.

And, uh, you know, I did the same night, or I become seasoned at this point of asking senior leaders, hey, you know, what should I do to, to become somebody? And, uh, when I asked Greg True to form, he, you know, let’s go out to lunch, let’s talk about it. And, and, uh, you know, I had a chance to meet his wife around Christmas time. So we went to, uh, the Christmas party at his house and And he tells a story of several, you know, a few weeks later after the Christmas party, walking on the beach with his wife in Mexico. And she, he says this, that this happened, I wasn’t there.

He says, you know, Sherry, his wife, turned to him and said, hey, what are you gonna do to help that Mike Hassell guy out? And that was, that was kind of the start of it. I think, I think I probably owe everything that came after that to Sherry’s, you know, walk on the beach with Rick. And Rick came back, he said, we got to figure this out. So he turned from being my mentor, a guy that said, well, you gotta, you gotta go join ACH and become a fellow.

You gotta, you know, keep raising your hand and doing this, and you gotta, you gotta volunteer for that. And he was my mentor then, but then he became my champion. He started putting me forward for jobs that were available that I didn’t necessarily know about. And I certainly probably wasn’t qualified. In some cases, I definitely wasn’t qualified for the jobs, but that’s how you stretch your legs and you grow and you learn.

Yeah. You know, you start putting more of those pieces together and you had the opportunities. So as my champion, Rick found me opportunities to, you know, to grow within the company. And I absolutely credit him as much as anybody, more than most, with whatever success I’ve had. So it became a chance to go over and run the urgent care service line.

Got my first real experience with a couple of dynamic doctors, love them both, still talk to them today. You haven’t lived until you’re only two doctors in your organization. My little organization, my part of Orlando Health, that urgent care, they go at each other over time off and who’s giving more and providing more. I remember that conversation vividly like it was yesterday. And just trying to walk through, you know, the coverage and learn how to keep a team happy and cohesive and how to, you know, meet the- try to look forward and see what the needs are.

Watch the book of business, you know, all those little pieces that I got a chance to do. And, uh, and true to form, Orlando Health had another growth spurt. And they, you know, the original job was to go over there and learn the urgent care service line, then go grow it. You know, we want to- we want 8 of these things. And I, I kind of hoped that I was going to be the guy that would, would give them that.

But Orlando Health being Orlando Health, they just decided to merge with an existing company. And, uh, and just, you know, overnight they they, uh, they went out and hung new signs on a bunch of existing urgent cares and, and, uh, that became Orlando Health Care Spot or something like that overnight. And so I was kind of, didn’t really have a position left there, but they opened up freestanding EDs. They’re, the Southlake Hospital is going to open up the first freestanding EDs, uh, in the organization. The, the, the job that they had posted to for the manager of that had already closed.

Rick made some phone calls, saw that open back up, and I got to go spend a year, uh, you know, bringing baby hospitals out of the ground. So is this, is this, um, the same campus, a different campus that you’re speaking of? I mean, I think you’re starting to lead into the Southlake Hospital, um, opportunity. Is that what I’m hearing? Yeah, that’s right.

Southlake. Uh, good memory. So, uh, Southlake was open up to new freestanding EDs about 40 miles apart from one another. Um, and, uh, I got to go over there and, you know, the best part about that was, uh, probably what I learned the most from. I got to sit in on probably 400+ interviews, maybe 450 interviews for about 130 jobs.

Uh, got to hire my first managers and supervisors and, and all these. Yeah, it was great. It was just a terrific opportunity, a really steep learning curve for me. Um, and, uh, You know that I did not- I knew that job would have an expiration date once they were open. My, my, my expiration date did not match their expiration date.

So I was a little surprised when I found myself without a chair at the end of the music. Scrambled a little bit. And then COVID happened. So coronavirus sent me down to South Florida. I happened to be an unemployed guy with a little bit of management experience and how to run a hospital.

And, uh, they needed that. They thought they needed a, uh, a field hospital down in South Florida. So got to go down there, the Central Florida Disaster Medical Association, uh, or coalition rather. And, uh, we opened up a field hospital, spent millions of dollars over the course of about 10 days, never saw a patient. Uh, remember back then, so this was for, for what event?

Uh, COVID, uh, for COVID. Yeah. That year, the Super Bowl had been held in, in South Florida somewhere in February. And here we were March 11th or so, I think the country got closed down, you know, more or less. And so by March 20th or so, I’m in South Florida, in a Marriott, or I’d be for the next year.

And we opened up that- how we had that hospital ready to open, and then they pulled the plug because we flattened the curve. Remember, the story was If you don’t need to come to the hospital, don’t come to the hospital. If you don’t need to have an elective surgery, don’t have your elective surgery. Stay out of the hospital. And boy, they flattened the heck out of the curve in South Florida to the point where hospitals like, no, no, really, come for your elective surgery, we’ll figure it out, right?

You know, they were, they were, uh, they were suffering with, uh, that revenue, uh, just kind of going away. And, and nobody knowing, you know, we, we would have, you know, funds lavished upon us for the next year, uh, you know, throughout COVID. But At the time, there was a lot of unknowns, uh, but they didn’t want to pull our team out. We were running an incident management team. Um, again, they’re out of a, out of a, you know, 200-bed Marriott next to the Fort Lauderdale Airport.

And, um, we got a whole bunch of nurses assigned to us and our new job became to keep the wheels on the bus for every skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility from the north border of Palm Beach County all the way to the southernmost point in the United States in Key West. So was this a, like a nursing pool that you developed? We didn’t develop it. Uh, remember, uh, the hospitals were laying people off left and right, not really laid them off, but well, maybe in some cases, but tell them not to come to work. Right.

And so they needed a job. Yeah. These skilled nurses were picking up jobs with these, these, uh, you know, uh, companies, uh, you had to come and work wherever they were needed. So the state of Florida actually, uh, you know, hired these, uh, resource companies to, to provide us with, uh, with people. And we had a half dozen infection preventionist nurses that would go out and teach people how not to transmit COVID from one patient to another.

And in South Florida, very interesting. It’s, you have the very big- I mean, Jewish is hundreds of people. It’s bigger than most hospitals. It’s a very big skilled nursing facility. But you also have the little mom-and-pop operations where they buy a house and they can put up to 6 people in that house and and provide care for them.

And so it was everything from those all the way to the very big ones. And, and I did that for 8 or 9 months. In the interim, Rick Smith had left Orlando Health. He’d gotten taken the CEO role in Troy, Alabama. And, you know, the way I like to tell it, he was on the phone every few days.

Hey, when are you gonna stop messing around South Florida, come up here and help me run this hospital. And so You know, got the chance to go up there eventually whenever things wound down for us. So things began to stabilize and, and we realized that, uh, you know, people could take care of, uh, their facilities. Uh, went and made the transition to Troy, Alabama and spent a couple years there. Wow.

That’s, uh, impress- so you, you went from frontline healthcare provider all the way through into the administrative roles. I think if I heard you correctly, I love the word champion, and you had a mentor who championed your success. I think there are several ways to come from- I’ll call it the ranks. Not everybody comes from the ranks in leadership, but you came from the ranks because somebody sponsored you because you were doing so well and then stood by your side all the way through your career. Is that A good way of saying it.

Oh, absolutely true. And, and you know, there’s, there’s some give and take when you’re trying to find that mentor, that champion, you know, you want somebody that’s gonna, gonna, first off, you want the unvarnished truth, right? Like, like if you’re not able to make, you’re not able to do it, they should tell you, hey, you need to go work on this. This is, this is where your, your, your weak spots are. Um, and there’s also just the education you need.

I mean, that, you know, is, is the master’s degree enough to, to separate you from the pack? It’s not, is the answer in most cases., so you need experiences and, you know, one of the things that Rick had counseled me to do it, they put together a little, leadership development group, package for a group of us back when I was with, Orlando Health Central and a handful of people in that group. And yeah, I remember Rick telling everybody, hey, you, y’all need to be working on your fellows with ACH. All of you do. And.

When I got to Troy, you know, this is after my COVID experience and, and, uh, you’re ready to, to, you know, to be kind of the, the, uh, operations guy, you know, for this bigger hospital, this 100-bed hospital. And I, I got a chance and said, Rick, you know, there are other people in that group that I, I think you gelled with better. You seem to have better relationships with and stuff. You know, why, uh, how’d I, how’d I manage to get the call here? You know, how’d I, how did I rise up?

And, uh, and, and grab your attention. He said, well, you know, he was very gracious. He said all the nice things about, about me that are probably half true. But he also said, you know, I told everybody to go get their fellows. You’re the only one that did it.

Yeah. So that’s, that’s the thing. It’s one thing to go out and find a good mentor. It’s another thing to do the things they ask you to do, even when they’re hard. And, uh, and make sure you complete that, that, that, that, that circle and bring it back.

Say, okay, you know, I found value in your advice. And to prove that, I went and did what you told me. And, uh, you know, today whenever I take on somebody to try to, try to help or try to mentor, in fact, I talked with one just today, just this morning. She’s, uh, in the, uh, NRHA CEO certification program and she’s looking for that CEO’s chair. And, uh, you know, she, talking to her, having talked to her for an hour total, you know, right now I can tell you, I think she’s got the right, the right chops for it, but I’ll be interested to see if she has the follow through.

I want to see that follow through. It’s very difficult for me to put you forward for a position. It would have been difficult for Rick to do that if he didn’t see follow through in, uh, in the things we talked about. So you, uh, so we’re, so we go from your leadership journey. Let’s, let’s jump to mentorship.

I think there’s two categories of mentorship that you’ve embraced, uh, finding good talent and championing them like you were championed. But you’re also faculty, so you’re a teacher as well, which is another form of mentorship, correct? I am. I taught at Regis, and I’ve actually got a class coming up.

We’ve been talking about the classes. Basically, it’s the advocacy piece is what they’ve asked me to teach for the Colorado School of Public Health. And excited to do that. Yeah, that’s one of the things that I found out here is that in this rural, very rural space that I’m in. If we don’t speak up for ourselves, there maybe isn’t anybody that has the knowledge that we have that’s willing to speak up for us.

So you’ve got to become your own advocate. I’ve been to DC twice already this year, once with the American Hospital Association and once with NRHA, you know, lobbying lawmakers to try to do things that make sense. Right now we’re in that political climate where everybody says they’re trying to help us. I wonder if some of the things they’re doing are really going to be helpful. And I wonder, uh, sometimes who they’re really trying to help with some of this.

Definitely a disconnect between, uh, what the federal government seems to prioritize and what the state government seems to prioritize here in Colorado sometimes. Um, you know, in, in both the federal government and especially the state of Colorado, It’s always budgetary concerns, right? And so there’s that fiscal responsibility. But whenever we look at programs and things like Medicaid, well, it’s one thing to say waste, fraud, and abuse, and I agree. If there’s waste, fraud, and abuse, we need to ferret it out, punish people, you know, discover those things and put an end to that.

That’s ridiculous. This is the program that’s there to help the least fortunate among us. But at the same time, whenever you have a program, you just, you You pull the rug out from under that program. There are people caught up in that that did deserve to be there, that did meet the metrics that were set for it. And I’m not a big proponent of change for change’s sake or change because we say there’s a problem, but we can’t really identify it or articulate it.

And I think we need to have an option. The truth is people still show up at our hospitals. People still show up in our doctor’s offices and our clinics. And they require care. And my providers, my nurses, my techs, my EVS folks, everybody expects to get paid for what they do at the end of the week, right?

You know, every 2 weeks for us. So I feel like we need to really have a voice. You know, NRHA says it well. They say, “Nothing about us without us” is one of their little sub-mottos. And so I’ve become very engaged in trying to keep up with some of that.

And trying to, uh, to be that advocate, especially with people right here in Northeast Colorado? Well, I, I think politics have played a role. It feels like we’re rebuilding healthcare. And so you have this old model, a reset button happened. We triggered these, this rural funding that we all have to compete for.

Um, there’s limited funds and now we’re in a place where because they hit the reset, that safety net that was there before for catching those in significant need isn’t quite there right now. And it is our hopes, if I were to say this correctly, is that these funds, we have to rebuild that safety net. But until that occurs, not everybody’s being properly served. That make sense? Yeah, I think that’s the fear.

Um, You know, again, I work in a, in a community where often when I hear a politician speak about, you know, the, again, the waste fraud abuse, or here’s the problem, I try to look back and I try to be honestly reflective and say, you know, gosh, does, does that exist? You know, here, I mean, has there ever been a patient that came and gave me a bad, a fake address or a fake name? I’m sure there has, 100% sure there is. Are we rife with that? I I don’t see it.

And I would say, show me where we’re doing that. We’ll certainly stop. We work really hard to be as transparent as we feel like we can be. Go overboard on that. I tend to that.

I mean, I write weekly in the paper about what’s going on in the hospital. We’re very open and honest about our financial situation, which is good. I mean, we’re in a good financial situation. It’s good that you’re open about it both.

Um, you know, but there, uh, but again, you, you still have to take care of the folks that present. So we’re, we’re fortunate in that because of our size, because the close-knit community, it’s community of 2,000 in the city, 5,000 in the county. And then depends on how big you draw that circle. You’ve helped me understand how big my circle is with your consulting work here. You know, we, we, we truly serve according to, to your analysis, uh, a pool of about 35,000 people., that will seek care here at Melissa Memorial for some reason.

Um, but because of that size, because of the way we’re structured, I don’t think there’s very many people falling through the cracks right here at my doorstep. I think we’re taking care of them. I hope that we are. If we’re not, please raise your hand, let us, you know, know how we can help. Um, but I look at other areas and I, and I can definitely tell you, uh, that there are are problems with the way that this has been rolled out and that people are definitely falling through the cracks.

And I worry about those people and what that impact is really on the greater, on the greater society. Well, you are also a state leader. And so when you’re- we’ve just been talking about advocacy and rebuilding healthcare, especially in the state of Colorado. In the Eastern Plains, which is the Frontier Plains. You are at the state level now too.

So you want to talk about your state responsibilities and the roles that you play there? Sure. So you’re gathered in- really, it was a fortunate thing for me, first-time CEO, you know, 3.5 years ago when I got here. And I was really happy to find the Eastern Plains Health Consortium, a group of 14 hospitals, I believe, maybe 15 by now. Um, and you get a seat on that board just by being the CEO of one of the participating hospitals.

So I got a seat at the table, you know, just by showing up, just by getting the job. Um, but what I found there, yeah, I’m, I’m very used to what I’ve perceived all my career as a pretty stiff competition amongst the various players in, you know, the Orlando market or even in Troy. I mean, we would, uh, you know, we certainly had our, our referral, uh, network and things like that. We rely on those people and they rely, rely on us, but Still, you’re trying to figure out how do you, you know, how do you make sure your doctor’s office is the busy doctor’s office in town. Um, you know, out here, um, and I thought, and I also thought I knew what rural was when I went to Troy, Alabama, that actually has, you know, multiple supermarkets and a Walmart and, uh, and they’re only, uh, you know, 45 minutes from, you know, Target and movie theater and things like that.

I thought that that was rural and I was, and it is to a degree. Um, but you know, here I’m 45 minutes from from Walmart and there’s no local fast food except for a Subway store. So it’s, yeah, I feel like it’s more frontier maybe than rural. You know, sometimes we don’t compete like that out here. We try to support one another.

We try to hold one another up. So the Eastern Plains Health Consortium is about that. In fact, the legend is that it was formed by a handful of hospitals that needed to share access to antivenom for snake bites. That’s, that’s kind of how they got their start was, uh, you know, 2 or 3 CEOs in a room talking about, hey, I’ll, I’ll buy it this month and it’ll be at my hospital. If you need it, come get it, you know, and then next month you buy or something, something kind of like that.

Um, and then of course at the state level and, and you, you really can’t, I, I told you I didn’t really wanna talk about the politics today. You really can’t escape the, the impact that it has. So, you know, Republican controlled federal government., in a very blue state, uh, of Colorado. Uh, so there’s, uh, definitely some friction and some rub there. Uh, but I do sit on the board with the Colorado Hospital Association, CHA board.

Um, and I didn’t get that because I’m smart or because I’m special. I was the only Eastern Plains guy that, that, that volunteered for the job. And so, uh, they didn’t want the Eastern Plains to be underrepresented. And I- yeah, so I, I do believe that you, uh, undervalue yourself. You’re a charismatic leader, and you’re one of few leaders that really steps up on the regional and the state level by raising their hands.

I’ve seen you in state meetings. You are a voice to be reckoned with. There’s always something to either inject or to offer some directive to. So I think it was a little less than the last person standing and a lot more of the quality of the leader that they saw in you saying welcome. Well, you’re gracious to say that.

And I do hope that I am able to carry the message of the Eastern Plains to that state level and remind them of the obvious problems that we all feel like we share for sure. Also sit on the State Emergency Medical Trauma Advisory Council, so SEMTAC. I was surprised there’s a state agency out there that, that full of a lot of first responder type folks, firefighters. And yet a lot of what’s needed or what’s decided for the hostiles is decided at that group. Boy, you talk about having a lot of personalities in one room, a lot of different personalities in one room.

That place is for sure that, you know, but again, it gets back to, you know, You’re using up that shoe leather to go pound the pavement and carry the message, right? And trying to do what’s right for the patients that we all serve and trying to come to some conclusions at the end of the day about what makes the most sense for the most people. And there’s sort of that urban-rural divide and things like that. But truthfully, in Colorado, I think that most of the urbans want to help the patients out here. It’s trying to figure out how do you best do that.

Certainly we want access to the care that a level 1 or 2 trauma center can provide. Our patients need that from time to time. It becomes how do we most efficiently get those patients moved to those places. I’m either blessed or cursed with that EMS under the roof here as well. It’s become a blessing.

We had to work at it to get it there. We’re able to help manage that. We’re blessed that the helicopter is here. Uh, the regional crew here, it’s huge. Um, you know, that’s an HCA.

That’s a big, it’s one of our big system partners, right? HCA provides that crew and that helicopter. It doesn’t cost us anything except for a little bit of space for the, for the bird and for the, for the crew. And, um, but that gets them in a, a great geographical position to cover all Northeast Colorado, parts of Wyoming, uh, a big chunk of, uh, of, uh, uh, Southwest Nebraska and into Kansas. Um, so honored and, and happy with that, that partnership.

And that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, you know, it’s that, it’s this Indian relationship. Um, we would never have enough business to, you know, to, to, to do the trauma care. You just wouldn’t see enough of it to, for it make sense for a, a trauma surgeon to come out here and, and, and take up residence. But we get to enjoy one, you know, 6 to 8 times. Right.

And they come out and they do apply their trade for the, you know, the bread and butter stuff. And then we have a referral pattern that takes those patients back to the right place to continue their care in the big city. Impressive. It’s a good journey. Well, let’s talk a little bit about briefly your hospital journey, Melissa Memorial, the great team that you’ve had there.

You’ve done a lot of work. From a high level, you found it in one condition and you’ve led it to another condition. You want to talk a little bit about those milestones, what you’re most proud of? Sure. Um, well, I like to tell the story about, you know, uh, I came out here and, uh, and was, uh, I wowed them enough to be offered the job, but I remember the recruiter calling me up saying, hey, they’re gonna, they’re gonna offer you this role.

I said, great. And, uh, he said, do you accept? I said, I do. And they said, are you sure? I said, well, yeah, I’m sure.

They said, you’re going to be here. They said, you’re gonna be here in September. I said, I am. You got me curious why you’re asking it like this. And I just want to make sure that you’re, you’re gonna accept the job, you’re gonna take the job.

And we already said goodbye. And she’s the last thing that she said to me was, hey, the CFO, the CNO, they both just quit. So good luck. Goodbye. Click.

Bye. And so I remember driving out here., you know, a week or a couple- well, I guess about a month later. But we’ve been searching, um, for that, that CFO in particular because I, you know, I’m a- I’m from, from bigger system, bigger hospitals. I don’t really fully understand at that point what critical access hospital means. And I’ve- until I got hired, honestly, and started looking in the job, or didn’t know what a cost report really was, had never had to fill that out.

And, uh, and I’ll tell you today, you know, with, uh 3 and a half, almost 4 years of hindsight, probably the most misunderstood and important piece of financial data or financial understanding that you need to properly be able to run a critical access hospital is understand the nuances of Medicare and the cost report. But I remember interviewing CFOs for the job, you know, on the way, drive, I pull off the side of the road, you know, somewhere in Kansas and I would have an interview, a Zoom interview, trying to find a pool of applicants that we could, we could bring that CFO from. And, you know, I tell you, I think there’s a place- they talk about, you know, how to spend this money and how to make the most impact. Financial education for the chief financial officer, the CEOs of rural hospitals, these critical access hospitals, that would probably be the way you could stretch your buck the farthest, just making sure people really understand it because there’s not a big pool of applicants for that job. Um, and, and probably half or more of the pool that’s there doesn’t really understand what they’re, what they’re applying to get to try and do.

Um, it’s very much a different beast and that’s something I, I struggle with a lot. But I was the fourth CEO in 4 years for this place. Um, you know, the first year was really folks stopped me in the hallway or, or in the midst of conversations say, hey, you know, so are you a, are you a 6-month guy? Are you a 1-year guy? Or, or you’re not from around here, so are you gonna be sticking around?

What’s. What’s the plan, Mike? What are you, what are you going to do here? What are you just, you just trying to put CEO behind your name so you can move on to that next, that next thing. And so, you know, a lot of reassurance that, hey, you know, I’m here to try to make this, make this work.

We want to make it, I want to make it better. I want to work with you to make it better. It’s, it’s us, not, not me. Um, there’s no I in team. Um, Mary Beth will, my CNO will quickly remind me if I make the mistake of saying I.

It’s right. It’s right. So we think is the, and you know, so it was, it was in a lot of ways, it was just a kind of a battered work pool, uh, about 75% travelers when I got here in the nursing, in the nursing pool. Um, so, you know, the, the, the trick for me was, you know, certainly a triage. You figure out what’s, what needs to be fixed right now.

Where do I need to apply the pressure to stop the bleeding? Right. Um, and certainly being able to hope that you might see the same nurse if you came back on different days, you know, to the hospital, to the ER or something, that was one thing we took very seriously at the very beginning. I’ve learned a lot about provider relations since I’ve been here. The providers are very, very eager to teach you those things, those lessons in every place I’ve ever been.

You know, but for me, it was really starting to very quickly begin, how do I build the team? So that we can together bring out the best in this organization. And, um, I think probably the best thing I did, and it was actually an H&H, uh, interim hire. Oh, oh, give credit where it’s due. You know, I found, you found for me a, a, a choice of two good nurses, two, two good applicants.

And I took the one that said, uh, I’m going to come for 12 weeks. I’m going to go back to Minnesota. I do not want to live in Colorado. I’m not interested in taking that job full-time. Please don’t offer.

And that’s who you picked. Yeah. And then 2 years later, that’s true. Later, she’s still here. You know, one of the great things about this hospital is that I’ve, I’ve had the same board chair for, well, the, the chairman of the board currently has been on the board for a long time, for decades.

And in fact, if you look at the, the facility that we’re actually in, the, the structure that we’re sitting, I’m sitting in right now, was opened in 2008 when he was on the board, Steve Young. Beautiful place. It is. And if you look at where we came from, you know, where we came from looks more like what I think of now as what a critical access rural hospital, you know, in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado looks like. Because that’s what most of them look like is our older, old building.

But because we have had that longevity and a group of people coming through our board that, and I believe for years we’ve had the right people on that board, different people. I mean, it’s, there’s some of those revolving seats, but always with an eye towards, you know, how do we make it better? How do we improve this while, while we’re here? And so they, they went and bought a farmer’s field, 2006, 2007, built a hospital and we’re blessed with a, with, as you see, you mentioned, a new facility, essentially. It looks, it looks new.

So once people get here, it’s, uh, it’s a lot easier to convince them to stay. Um, it’s not just the facilities, the people mostly, um, but certainly it doesn’t hurt to be coming to a building that looks modern, has modern things. Um, you know, my predecessors have, uh, have spent their money that we’ve received wisely. Um, you know, COVID funds brought on brand new beds for this hospital. COVID funds bought, uh, brand new state-of-the-art ambulance, getting a couple years old now, but, but state-of-the-art 2, 3 years ago, um, when it was, when it was purchased.

Now it’s longer than that now. It’s probably like 4 or 5 years, I guess, now that we actually purchased it. But, um, you know, so it’s been, there’s been very good shepherding of the resources here in this organization for a long time, uh, despite some of the brief tenure that some of those CEOs might have had immediately before me. But, uh, yeah, I think that, uh, that leadership piece and that governance piece of the board had a lot to do with that. So, you know, I get here, we start trying to rebuild this.

Uh, hired Mary Beth, uh, in to be, uh, Mary Beth Olsen to be my chief nursing officer. And it’s funny, I, I, there were definitely people in town, they’re kind of sitting on the sidelines, nurses that lived here, they were working somewhere else waiting to see who the leader was going to be, who they would be working for. That’s right. And, uh, that reputation of that leader at all levels, but, uh, certainly nursing is important for your hospital. It matters.

And they, you know, they had to really believe in them, be able to trust them, feel like they could trust them. And every day, you know, we’ve got to come to work as a C-suite, as a management team, and do what’s right for the employees and guide this organization in the right direction. That’s a fiscal responsibility. Even more important, a clinical responsibility to make sure we’re treating patients right. You know, one of the things we’re working to do here is we did a survey, uh, say it was September ’22 to September ’23.

And in that one-year time, I wanted to look at every, every referral that went out, everybody that left the ER to go somewhere else for care. And I wanted to understand why. And, uh, you know, frankly, I found, we found, uh, about 50 patients. I’m not sure they had to leave. Um, you know, they were referred out to the Front Range for follow-up or for care.

Um, but there’s something we should have been able to do here. And so now we meet actually monthly on that. We changed out the way that we structure the provision of care at the provider level in the ED and in the inpatient side. I think there’s been great success there.

It went from a situation where we had a whole bunch of providers that were coming out for a couple days at a time, and they’d do their 2 or 3 days, and there wasn’t a lot of collegiality amongst them or amongst the clinic staff on the other side of the house. And so we replaced them with a group that could provide me with 7 to 10 days at a stretch for every provider. Now I’ve got, you know, 4 providers, really 5. And they know each other, they trust each other, they trust the providers down in the clinic, vice versa. And we’re getting, I believe, a much better continuity of care.

But then to ensure that, you know, I talked about this, all that bleed that we had going out of here, that’s 50 people that left for no reason. We monitor that every month. Now we do a transfers out review, and the reason we do it is to make sure- couple, couple reasons, couple big reasons. If I need to buy a dialysis machine so I can keep kidney, you know, failure patients here for their other problems that they might present, maybe they, you know, they’re in an automobile accident, but I can’t keep them because they’re on dialysis. Well, if I need to buy that dialysis machine, I need to understand that.

And then the clinical side, are all the patients that get transferred out, are they coming from one provider? And I say, OK, gosh, do we need to go and train this provider more? Do we have the right staffing mix on to make sure we support the patients that we’re able to see? And so that gives us a chance to touch the pulse of the transfers every month and make sure that they’re appropriately being done. And there’s a lot of reasons for that.

First off, you want care close to home. I mean, you came to the hospital here in Holyoke. You want to be seen here in Holyoke, right? Certainly you want to be transferred out if it’s necessary. You want to go to the right place so you can get better.

Um, but your local hospital should be able to do, you know, be able to work to the top of its licensure. Uh, nobody expects me to, again, to be at level 1 trauma center, but they certainly expect that I can, you know, stitch a wound up right and, uh, and manage your, your critical diabetes or, or help you out with your breathing problem. So we work hard to be able to do those things. And, uh, we just want to be the best at that that we can be. Not trying to be everything to everybody, but trying to be a really good community hospital.

And you’ve been able to knock it out of the ballpark. And I, I think keeping care local, building your team, uh, stabilizing your culture and your organization- if we were to wrap this up with like your leadership philosophy, like, um, when I ask a question like, hey, what do you bring to the table on leadership when you’re coaching or mentoring or leading What are the top 3 things that you find to be important? Well, you know, I’ll kick it off with, I, I know I’m not great at everything. I think there’s a couple things I, I’m, I’m better at than, uh, than maybe, uh, maybe I was, or maybe some other people are. Um, but I, I’m not a micromanager.

So I, I, I expect my leaders at every level to be able to do the job that they’ve been put into. And that doesn’t mean that don’t, we don’t support them. We, we do. You know, one of the ways, and you’re very involved in this, Charles, you know, we, we brought, we brought your group in, right? And you got LDI coming up, I think next, next week, I believe.

Week after next. Okay. Week after next. So we’re, you know, we put the mid-level managers, directors, and then the C-suite, certainly, you know, do those team building exercises and do those thought processes. You talked about being a good thought partner.

You know, we have a good thought partner in you and Stephen. Hearts. And we have that developed here inside the house. You know, it’s okay to not know the answer, but it’s not okay to sit on the lack of knowledge and then make the wrong choice. So we encourage people to act, but we want to be very transparent.

We meet weekly as a C-team, the staff, the C-team members, you know, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Human Resources Officer, CNO. They’re expected to go back to their respective groups and lead them in the same way. So empower people to do the right thing, give them the tools to do those things with, and then hold them accountable for the results or for the performance. And that’s- I mean, that’s the secret. It’s not no secret at all, right?

It’s just coming in, executing that over and over and over again and keeping an eye on the result. Well, Michael, you’ve had an absolutely amazing leadership journey. Across the United States, from frontline care provider status all the way up to hospital CEO, state leaders, faculty, mentor. It’s been impressive to watch. I know that you’re committed not only to the region and to your people, but to the journey of rebuilding and strengthening healthcare.

So it’s been, it’s been great understanding and working next to you, but understanding your story. And I’m looking forward to seeing what you bring to not only the hospital, but to the region, the state in the years to come. Well, I appreciate that. It’s great to be, uh, again, not to, to give you too many accolades here on the, on this podcast. Got to keep those things limited, right?

But we wouldn’t- we, we probably wouldn’t be where we are as fast as we were without the help of, of H&H. And I really do mean that, um, you know, everything from, from the board down, honestly, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit different and a little bit better, um, since we had started having you guys around. So thank you for your- for walking the walk with us. Thank you. It’s always enjoyable.

Great team that you hold, and enjoy your leadership as well. We have Michael Hassell, the CEO of Melissa Muramura Hospital from Holyoke, Colorado. And we’ve spent the last, may I say, 45 minutes plus kind of hearing his story, exploring philosophies on leadership and understanding that contribution to healthcare. So thank you, Michael. Appreciate your time.

Look forward to the years of come working with you and knowing you. Thanks, Charles. We’ll see you next week. God bless. Uh, it’s not great.

Great. Let’s see what any of that means. Let me guess, you didn’t push record. I hit record. It then said transcription stop.

I hit record and, um, We should be in a good place. I just, I don’t want to leave this. When you hang up, I’m going to stay on because I don’t even know where the hell they save this to, but we’ll figure it out. Okay. So they do magical things and we figure from there.

Good. All right. Totally still good with you. Yep. Thank you.

And then something different. We submitted our ACH for NRHA. So whatever you and I and Steve did, we’re going to recycle that in a webinar. And so I don’t know when that is. It’ll probably be in the next 6 months.

And so I’ll update the presentation, prep you guys for it, and we’ll have a 1-hour mini session of it all. Let’s do it in Kansas City when they go to, when they go over there for their rural conference. I meet with Cody tomorrow to better understand the timing of all that. So we’ll see how that kind of plays out. But I think we can- we pitched your presentation.

The answer is yes. Next is I got to update the works and condense it because ours, I think, was an hour and a half and now they just need about an hour. Okay. Yeah. Good.

It’s all good. Thanks, Mr. Hassell. Peace, pump. Talk to you later. You’re a good man.

Thanks. Peace out.