Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Marc Augsburger, MBA, BSN, RHCEOC, President and CEO of Edgerton Hospital and Health Services

Transcript

Marc Augsburger, MBA, BSN, RHCEOC, President and CEO of Edgerton Hospital and Health Services · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:00
This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
0:02
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
0:04
Mark Augsperner,
0:06
president, CEO of the hospital health services. Mark,
0:09
it's a pleasure to have you on a
0:10
podcast today.
0:12
Hey. Really glad to be here, and thanks
0:14
for the invitation.
0:16
Absolutely. Now I'm excited for our conversation. I
0:18
know we're gonna be talking a lot about
0:20
rural health care and some of the great
0:21
things you're doing at Edgerton Hospital. But before
0:23
we dive in, can you tell us a
0:24
little bit more about yourself and your background?
0:27
Oh, absolutely.
0:29
So I took the clinical track,
0:33
I'd call it to the CEO position. So
0:36
I've been a registered nurse for thirty seven
0:39
years
0:40
and have bounced
0:42
around the Midwest a little bit.
0:45
I've, practiced nursing in Ohio and Michigan. And,
0:50
through that journey,
0:52
got my MBA. My first CEO job then
0:55
was in Iowa
0:57
way in the Northwest Corner at Horn Memorial
0:59
Hospital in Ida Grove.
1:01
Then my second CEO position
1:04
was in Cairo, Michigan,
1:07
at Cairo Community Hospital, which became McLaren Cairo
1:11
Region. And now, just as of March 1,
1:14
I've celebrated my
1:16
fifth year
1:17
at Edgerton Hospital
1:19
and Health Services here in Edgerton, Wisconsin.
1:25
Fantastic. Well, it sounds like an amazing career
1:27
in just so many different,
1:29
hospitals and organizations, different communities, but all rural
1:32
and smaller communities.
1:34
What do you really draws you to that
1:36
space, sir? What do you find exciting and
1:38
exhilarating about it?
1:40
Yeah. So I love the small space.
1:42
I grew up in
1:44
a small town of about 5,500
1:47
people in Bluffton, Ohio.
1:50
And,
1:51
I cut my teeth there first as an
1:53
aid at the hospital. And after becoming a
1:54
registered nurse,
2:08
critical care unit,
2:10
and then finally spent,
2:12
a fair amount
2:14
of my time
2:15
as an emergency department nurse and emergency department
2:19
health supervisor
2:20
at the hospital.
2:22
And so, you know, I've just grown up
2:25
as that being my community hospital,
2:28
and it has really drawn me to
2:32
love rural. I've, you know, I've spent a
2:35
little bit of time working in
2:38
700
2:39
bed hospital also in Saginaw, Michigan, ran an
2:42
emergency department that was much larger than any
2:46
of my three critical access hospitals that I've
2:50
been CEO at, but,
2:53
always return to the rural roots.
2:56
It's where I grew up. It's what I
2:58
know, and,
3:00
really, really enjoy the friendly people
3:03
and being able to provide
3:06
ever increasing
3:07
access to care
3:09
to the residents of the community and surrounding
3:13
communities that we've served.
3:15
I love that. That's amazing to hear, and,
3:17
you know, really cool that you've been able
3:19
to make an impact on so many different
3:21
of those rural communities as well. Now
3:24
could you tell us a little bit about
3:25
the growth at Edgerton Hospital and Health Services
3:27
since you took the helmet in 2021?
3:29
What has been the key to successful expansion
3:32
and adding services in in more of those
3:33
things that you've been able to do? Yeah.
3:36
We've, we've been able to grow significantly
3:39
here at Edgerton.
3:41
Probably one of the things that really
3:43
started
3:44
off this, boom in our growth,
3:48
was that the fact that we received a
3:51
governor's health care infrastructure
3:54
grant of 3 and a half million dollars
3:57
just about four years ago.
3:59
And that allowed us to,
4:02
purchase
4:04
a building that had never been inhabited,
4:08
was setting there empty since it had been
4:11
built.
4:12
And we were able to
4:14
transform
4:15
5,000 square foot into
4:18
a lovely new
4:20
multiuse
4:21
clinic area.
4:23
And so we were able to pull in
4:26
new and additional
4:28
specialists at that time,
4:30
moved a lot of things,
4:31
from the hospital,
4:33
you know, four years ago
4:35
and was able to provide
4:38
additional access to care
4:40
to the community.
4:43
Expansion has just moved on
4:46
since that time. Again, we
4:49
did not have orthopedic
4:51
services.
4:52
We have a full line
4:54
of specialty
4:55
orthopedic serve services now,
4:58
that
4:59
moves
5:00
all the way from
5:03
a hand,
5:04
arm and shoulder specialist
5:07
to sports medicine
5:09
and full robotic hip and knees.
5:12
We have a very, very vibrant
5:16
chronic
5:16
pain
5:17
center,
5:19
and we've just extended that another
5:22
20 miles away
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from us. We have an extension in Whitewater,
5:28
Wisconsin,
5:30
where we also opened up a seven day
5:33
a week, ten hour a day
5:35
urgent care
5:37
last fall as well.
5:39
Those are some of
5:41
the growth
5:42
pieces that came out of,
5:45
you know, getting that health care infrastructure
5:48
money
5:49
and, you know, building out, giving us additional
5:51
room then at the hospital to add these
5:52
specialists. We've only continued to grow
5:54
hospital to add these specialists. We've only continued
5:56
to grow from that point. We have
5:59
a building that is attached to the hospital,
6:05
that we lease, that
6:06
we don't own, but it was built about
6:10
fourteen years ago,
6:12
about six months after the new hospital was
6:15
built. And there was a different clinic in
6:18
there for a number of years,
6:21
a former affiliation.
6:23
And at this point, we occupy
6:25
that space, and
6:27
we've been able
6:30
to fill that with,
6:32
additional
6:33
and new
6:34
family medicine.
6:36
We're looking at additional family medicine as well.
6:40
We also do some telehealth. We have some
6:44
telepsychiatry
6:45
that's in our downtown
6:47
building,
6:49
teleendocrinology.
6:51
And we've been able to do a
6:54
robust
6:55
remodel
6:56
and,
6:57
moving of our two unit,
7:01
in house sleep lab.
7:03
It's absolutely beautiful.
7:05
It's totally silent. It's a great part
7:08
of the building
7:09
that, we now
7:11
operate,
7:12
attached to us again. So,
7:15
the and we're looking, of course, to the
7:18
future for
7:20
additional growth opportunities. So it's just been a
7:24
very exciting time here in the last five
7:27
years.
7:30
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, really
7:31
cool to understand some of the different ways
7:33
you're expanding both the infrastructure as well as
7:36
opportunities to grow access to care across the
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board. And I'm curious, you know, whether it's
7:41
it's looking at,
7:43
making
7:43
growth in the,
7:45
the
7:46
the physical footprint or digital of telehealth too.
7:48
You know, all of that takes,
7:51
additional,
7:52
staff and bringing in specialties and specialists and
7:55
those kinds of things. And I know that
7:56
can be particularly challenging in the rural setting.
7:59
So how have you gone about recruiting and
8:01
and bringing on,
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additional,
8:04
clinicians and specialists,
8:05
to make sure that as you're adding these
8:07
spaces and services, you're able to,
8:10
serve the community well?
8:12
Sure. I can tell you we have been
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extremely
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fortunate
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to
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have
8:19
great reference pieces
8:21
and
8:22
great physician
8:24
and nurse practitioners
8:26
here at our facility
8:28
that know people from all over the state
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and down into Illinois.
8:34
And so we have been able to grow
8:38
mostly
8:39
by word-of-mouth.
8:41
Now we did recruit
8:42
our
8:44
family practice additional family practice physician,
8:48
utilizing
8:49
a company to help find them because,
8:53
as you know,
8:55
nationwide,
8:56
family practice can be a pretty hard,
8:59
you know,
9:00
specialty to find.
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But some of our other specialists,
9:05
we have physicians that
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come to us weekly and see patients from
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the Milwaukee
9:12
area, from the Chicago area, from the Madison
9:15
area.
9:17
And it has just
9:19
grown by word-of-mouth
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more than
9:23
than anything else.
9:25
And
9:26
what has really helped us with that growth
9:29
is
9:30
our
9:31
strong
9:32
commitment
9:33
to patient engagement,
9:36
patient safety,
9:37
and very high patient quality.
9:40
That word has gotten out there strongly,
9:43
and we have
9:45
a very, very well known swing bed program
9:48
at our hospital. We're known to rehab them,
9:53
the patients exceptionally well.
9:55
And our
9:57
rehab services is also regionally known,
10:00
not only in the swing bed,
10:03
status,
10:04
but also in the outpatient
10:06
space as well. You know, another
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part of that then comes our
10:13
pulmonary and cardiac rehab departments,
10:16
and it's really exciting
10:19
how the whole
10:21
rehab
10:22
of
10:23
patient care works,
10:26
with our high quality standards.
10:31
I love that. That's helpful to understand. You
10:33
know, really cool to have that type of,
10:36
be in that position where you've got, you
10:37
know, specialists and and clinicians and family practice
10:40
physicians,
10:41
looking to come in and really be more
10:43
part of what you're doing,
10:45
within your space. And so that's really cool
10:47
to hear. Now I'm curious. What is your
10:50
top priority for the next twelve months or
10:52
so? What do you really focus on and
10:54
is top of mind for you?
10:56
Yeah. I think like every other critical access
10:59
hospital in the nation
11:01
is we continue to work on financial stability.
11:06
Things are just tough out there.
11:09
There's a lot of misconceptions
11:12
in the public
11:13
that hospitals are making money
11:17
hand over fist, and that is just not
11:20
true.
11:21
It's,
11:22
you know, you feel like you're bobbing up
11:25
and down in water sometimes,
11:27
trying to keep your nose above,
11:30
to keep things breathing. But,
11:33
financial stability
11:35
with making good financial decisions,
11:39
bringing in the right specialists,
11:41
you need to have
11:43
a robust family practice
11:46
set of folks, which
11:48
we continue to work on.
11:51
There
11:52
by building
11:53
downstream revenue with, you know, other kind of,
11:57
tests and things that family practice will bring
12:00
in.
12:02
Along with that,
12:04
top priority,
12:06
in the next twelve months would be securing
12:09
additional
12:10
specialists. Again, that falls into,
12:13
that whole financial
12:14
stability
12:15
piece.
12:16
And,
12:18
and I guess tied in there, this is
12:21
our year
12:23
to complete our next
12:25
triennial,
12:26
so our three year community health needs assessment.
12:30
We're working on that currently.
12:33
We've worked hard on the seven
12:36
top priorities
12:37
that were
12:39
discovered and came out
12:41
of our community health needs assessment that was
12:43
completed three years ago. And
12:46
so we have had our
12:49
community
12:50
written survey has been out and results are
12:53
back, and we're looking
12:55
forward
12:56
to our,
12:58
open forum
13:00
that we'll be,
13:01
hosting with community leaders and the company we
13:04
work with
13:06
to help conduct our community health needs assessment
13:09
so we can get that vibrant report together
13:13
and have a work plan in place so
13:17
that we can
13:18
have everything available to the public,
13:21
of course, by December 31 year.
13:24
And that will tie strongly
13:27
back again
13:29
into
13:29
the long term financial stability
13:32
of our facility.
13:36
Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
13:38
And, you know, I think so critical, as
13:40
you mentioned, to have the,
13:43
ability to have that foresight to work with
13:45
your team and and do the assessments to
13:46
understand what's you're going to need next, what
13:48
the community is going to need next, and
13:50
have that plan in place, in in in,
13:52
you know, truly,
13:54
fascinating to think about all that goes into
13:56
doing something like that. Who else is involved
13:59
with that type of assessment? Obviously, I can
14:00
imagine you're very much involved in,
14:03
you know, looking at the information, gathering the
14:05
strategy. But what are those discussions like with
14:07
your leadership team?
14:08
Yeah. Not only do do we have that
14:11
discussion with my executive team, the rest of
14:13
our leadership team,
14:15
but our board of trustees plays a strong
14:18
role in that.
14:20
One of the things that we
14:21
continue to do is,
14:23
work on,
14:25
our board. And as we replace
14:29
members that, retire off, and leave the board,
14:34
we look at the composition
14:36
of the board members
14:38
and the strength
14:39
that they bring with the knowledge,
14:42
to the hospital.
14:44
Discussion
14:45
with our leadership team,
14:48
can be pretty vibrant
14:50
as you can imagine.
14:52
Lots of discussion
14:54
and
14:54
ideas that come out of,
14:58
the leadership and,
15:00
my executive team.
15:02
And,
15:03
you know,
15:05
one of the things I actually,
15:07
just have recently done
15:09
is completed
15:12
a piece of
15:13
our strategic planning
15:16
with the board and my executive team.
15:18
And we spent quite a bit of time,
15:21
a number of hours,
15:23
looking at,
15:25
strengths of
15:26
what our hospital does, talking about our high
15:29
quality,
15:31
and,
15:31
you know, how do we
15:34
work
15:35
hand in hand together
15:37
with, the community,
15:39
our patients
15:41
that we serve in the communities that we
15:43
serve,
15:44
and how do we strongly
15:46
engage with them to gain even better understanding
15:50
of the services provided at the hospital.
15:54
You know, one of the things I always
15:55
like to say is a lot of times
15:57
you don't pay attention
16:00
to marketing, especially in health care,
16:03
unless you need the service. Right?
16:06
So if you are not,
16:09
you know, 40,
16:12
and,
16:13
it's time to have your first,
16:16
colonoscopy,
16:18
to stay healthy,
16:19
you know, promoting health and wellness is super
16:22
important.
16:23
But if if you're maybe in your early
16:27
twenties or your twenties, you don't have any
16:29
kind of
16:31
GI issues,
16:32
you're probably not gonna pay much attention
16:35
to, you know, what kind of gastroenterology
16:40
services are provided at the hospital.
16:43
But, boy, the moment that you need that
16:45
kind of a service,
16:47
you wanna know that your facility
16:50
provides the kind
16:52
of testing and diagnostics
16:54
that you need. And,
16:56
that's the word that you need to get
16:59
out there and keep letting the public know
17:03
it's not a one and done. It's
17:05
continuous
17:06
community
17:07
engagement
17:08
and education,
17:10
that helps
17:11
work with the financial stability
17:14
of your facility.
17:17
That's such a great point. And, you know,
17:18
it's so interesting to understand what's, driving those
17:22
conversations on your level. And then, truly, like
17:25
you said, that continuous community engagement, that ability
17:28
to not only be the place that you
17:29
go when you're in trouble, but also understanding,
17:33
you know, all the possibilities and potential for
17:35
building stronger communities and and wellness within the
17:37
community too is,
17:39
so, so interesting and and fascinating. I know
17:41
the dynamics, especially
17:43
in small communities and rural areas, are are
17:45
really, really fascinating and unique and and can
17:48
lend yourself to doing some pretty cool things,
17:50
you know, if you're open to it. So
17:52
that's really interesting.
17:56
Now before we wrap up here, I'm curious,
17:58
where do you see some of the biggest
17:59
opportunities for rural health care to thrive, and
18:01
what do leaders need to overcome in order
18:03
to get there?
18:05
Yeah. So I really feel you know, we've
18:07
talked about financial stability
18:09
and beat that into the ground. Right? So,
18:12
of course, that's of utmost importance
18:14
to,
18:15
everyone in health care.
18:17
But some other really strong areas
18:20
is is that we continue the journey of
18:23
high value
18:25
and high quality care,
18:28
for our patients.
18:30
I'm very proud to say that, in '24
18:34
and '25,
18:35
our hospital was named a National Rural Hospital
18:38
Association's,
18:41
top 20 critical access hospital
18:44
in the nation both years for our patient
18:48
satisfaction.
18:49
So, again,
18:50
you know, putting putting and keeping that high
18:53
quality out there.
18:55
We are part of a clinically integrated network,
18:59
high value network,
19:01
and,
19:02
that should only help
19:04
to
19:05
not only help us,
19:08
keep the quality high and and look at
19:11
additional quality measures maybe not we're not even
19:14
measuring yet.
19:15
But we're
19:17
helping a host of hospitals in the state
19:21
to do the exact same thing. So I
19:23
think it's really important
19:25
that
19:25
as
19:27
rural hospitals
19:28
and critical access hospitals, we continue
19:32
to work hard together
19:34
and,
19:35
really do the work of learning from each
19:39
other. I know in Wisconsin,
19:42
we have the rural Wisconsin
19:44
health care cooperative
19:46
and the Wisconsin hospital association,
19:50
both very, very strong,
19:52
with membership,
19:54
and they really do a great job of
19:57
getting us together,
19:59
providing education,
20:02
you know, as a whole as we all
20:04
get together.
20:06
So and then, you know, that leads really
20:08
into
20:10
you need to do a deep dive
20:12
into having a
20:14
vibrant,
20:15
and robust strategic
20:17
plan and the goals coming out of that.
20:20
Again, that all leads
20:22
to keeping
20:23
your
20:24
head above the water
20:26
and,
20:27
really projecting you further into the future,
20:31
whether you're just looking
20:33
for stability
20:35
or there are growth opportunities,
20:38
for you. So you gotta know your business,
20:42
and you really need to develop a really
20:45
clear road road map of efficiencies.
20:50
I love it. Mark, thank you so much
20:52
for joining us on the podcast today. This
20:54
has been such a fascinating discussion, and I
20:56
look forward to connecting with you again soon.
20:58
That's a pleasure. Thanks, Laura.