Walker has more than a decade of experience in the health care industry. He began his career with Medical City Healthcare in 2011 and has held roles at the McKinney and Dallas locations. Walker served as chief operating officer at Medical City Denton for five years prior to his new role.
Walker recently spoke with Community Impact about his goals for the Lewisville hospital, challenges within the industry and his passion for quality care. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
How has your prior experience prepared you for being the CEO?
HCA [Healthcare] puts a lot of emphasis on developing leaders. They put a lot of resources into leadership development programs. The one I went through in 2017, our executive development program, that’s really designed to kind of groom leaders into executive roles and be able to deliver the mission and vision of HCA. That has been an invaluable tool.
The other thing that's really helped me in this role is just having experience in four different hospitals within Medical City Healthcare. I've got sort of a wide range of hospitals that I've had experience at— [from] that community hospital feel all the way up to Medical City Dallas, where you see everything.
I've had some really good mentors in HCA, and they've all had really unique skill sets. I've been able to pick those strengths of each one of those leaders and try to incorporate it into my own style.
What are your day-to-day operations as CEO?
The important thing is being able to provide the strategic direction of the hospital. There's an importance of knowing our board members, understanding the community and how our community is growing, and how we as an organization can meet the needs of that community. One of my jobs is just meeting with community members and understanding where we can meet the needs of the growth that's happening, also understanding the needs of our hospital staff. We've got to make sure that our teams have the tools and resources they need to be able to do their job.
What are your goals and priorities for Medical City Lewisville?
Quality and patient experience are two goals, and that's going to be the same at any HCA hospital. If we're really hitting on quality and care experience, then growth will happen naturally. Growth is the third goal that we have, and I think we have a lot of areas that we can grow here in Lewisville. No. 1 is women’s services—that's a big service line in Lewisville. The other area is surgical services growth. Cardiology is a big deal for us here.
Are there any big initiatives planned for the hospital?
We just got approval for our proposal for a $16 million [neonatal intensive care unit] expansion, and [labor and delivery] renovation. We're going to be going from 16 NICU beds to 21. Then we're going to go back and renovate our existing [labor and delivery] unit. We’re really excited about that.
What are the biggest challenges facing Medical City Lewisville? How do you plan to address them?
Staffing. That's a challenge at every hospital in the United States. But we're taking a proactive approach. We're maintaining a safe environment for our patients, families, visitors, everybody that's coming to the hospital.
We've invested with the Galen College of Nursing. The goal is to have a Galen College of Nursing campus in all of our major markets within HCA. That's going to be a big initiative for us to grow the nursing workforce.
The other part that is really key for us is retention. Our [chief nursing officer] has done a really good job here of putting in place initiatives to retain staff. I think that's all about understanding the needs of our teams, understanding the needs of the nurses. If they have concerns or equipment needs or anything like that, they're able to speak up and let us know about it. Creating that culture throughout the hospital is key for retaining.
What does it mean to you to lead this hospital?
I love what I'm doing here. My wife and I and our three kids live in Highland Village. It's really cool to be able to come over here and lead a team in the community that we live in. One of the things that we say at HCA here in Lewisville is we care like family, and that's a really accurate statement. I've got so many family [members] that have had excellent care within Medical City, and those teams at all those hospitals rally around us and really make sure that we're taken care of.
It's also really nice to lead a team that's already performing extremely well. It's not like coming into a hospital where you got to really turn things around. The hospital, the staff and the leadership team is already excellent here. So that's been a really big blessing, I think, stepping into this role.
