CEO Welcome

Dear Fellow Community Residents, As the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of North Canyon Medical Center, I am honored to be part of your community and grateful for the warm welcome I received during my move to Gooding County. I officially started my new position on May 4, 2011 and moved my family from Tennessee the first week in July. My wife’s family lives in Nampa, so we have been visiting Idaho for the past eight years. We love country living and the beautiful outdoors.

Being the CEO of North Canyon Medical Center for less than a year has given me a very unique vantage point to evaluate our services from an outsider’s perspective. This opportunity has helped me to re-evaluate our customer service program, billing practices, charges, and the service lines that we offer, as well as the wonderful opportunity to operate a brand new state-of-the-art hospital. Not many rural communities the size of Gooding County are blessed with a new facility that can meet the healthcare needs of the future, and I salute the prior administration, the employees, the board members, and community members responsible for making this happen.

Although we have a new hospital, we also have a large debt service that needs to be met every month. Unfortunately, when the new hospital was opened, the country was experiencing one of the worst economic downturns in the history of this nation. As a result, the hospital experienced lower volumes than expected, which created some difficult challenges over the past two years. When I started, one of my first priorities was to develop an operational improvement plan that identified key strategic initiatives to increase financial performance while improving our customer service and specialty services.

I am happy to share with you that, through the participation of many community and civic leaders in our county, we have developed a comprehensive two-year strategic business plan. Because of this community cooperative effort, we were able to develop and initiate our strategic plan, which has significantly helped to improve the performance and operation of the hospital. I am grateful to all the members who participated in our strategic planning session, and we are seeing wonderful results.

We remain focused on our mission “To improve the healthcare of people in our region.” We offer a brand new hospital with a broad range of acute-care services and state-of-the-art surgical suites; we have the latest and most expensive technology to diagnose your healthcare needs; we have a beautiful specialty clinic providing a variety of specialty services from the finest physicians in the region; and most of all, we have an experienced and dedicated staff that is committed to providing the best care possible. We also remain committed to our vision “To be the trusted provider of patient-centered, integrated healthcare.” Through our partnership with St. Luke’s Health System we are able to deliver a more advanced, highly integrated, and seamless delivery system that offers “better health, better care, at a lower cost.”

My father always told me that “We need to be masters of circumstances and not allow circumstances to master our lives.” Therefore, at North Canyon Medical Center our leadership team has decided to take a proactive approach to improving the customer service we provide. As a result of this initiative, every employee and contract worker will be required to attend an ongoing customer service training program which will become part of their job responsibilities. Also, we just completed a community image survey during which we contacted 300 residents by phone to answer specific questions regarding their perception of North Canyon Medical Center. These results will be shared with our board of directors, medical staff, and employees, as a baseline to accurately measure our success and identify areas to improve.

I am grateful to be given the opportunity to serve this community and be part of a fabulous healthcare system. As we begin a new year of opportunities, please accept my best wishes for good health and happiness.

David A. Butler
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)