DEL.ICIO.USNew CEO gears up for big job at Grady
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, September 01, 2008
Michael Young starts his job as head of Grady Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, arriving with the kind of hope usually reserved for a miracle worker.
Billled as talented, aggressive leader with a reputation for turning around troubled hospitals, the 52-year-old is the latest in a string of CEOs at Grady, most of whom have quickly come and gone and left the hospital little changed.
Don Heupel/STR
Michael Young in his Erie County Medical Center office at the hospital in Buffalo, N.Y, where he was CEI.
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“I feel a little nervous. Actually I feel a lot nervous,” Young said. “This is a heavy lift.”
But he comes to Grady having turned around a smaller hospital in western New York that had similar problems to Georgia’s largest, busiest and most-troubled hospital.
Moreover, he already has some million-dollar ideas.
For instance, Young wants to repeat an analysis he did at the New York hospital that helped address the long waits between surgeries. Addressing that problem at Grady, he said, could provide for thousands more surgeries and generate millions of more dollars for the hospital.
He’s also looking at Grady’s problems through the eyes of the people who use the hospital: the long waits in the emergency room, the difficulties in scheduling follow-up visits, the broken-down equipment.
“I’m going to hold people accountable,” he said. “I’m going to ask why.”
Young takes over a hospital that is drowning in debt and struggling with antiquated equipment and dwindling government aid. He said he has studied the budget, talked with doctors and administrators and met with some community leaders.
He recently asked to see all the checks the hospital cut over one thousand dollars.
“That tells you what’s really going on,” he said.
He believes Grady is ready for change, and he arrives amid monumental changes in the way the hospital operates. Earlier this year, the hospital authority board handed control over to a new nonprofit corporation board composed of some of Atlanta’s business and community elites.
Pete Correll, the retired head of Georgia Pacific, helped plan some of those changes and now serves as chairman over the Grady corporation board.
“I couldn’t be more excited,” he said about Young’s arrival. “The situation is urgent, the losses are still very significant.”
He added, “I’ve come away convinced that he’s the right man for the job … Now we can get started.”
The hospital has also received a $200 million pledge from the Woodruff Foundation for new equipment and facilities.
“That has put us two years ahead,” he said.
Young said he’s aware that Grady has a reputation for resisting change. But he plans to break through that by making sure the right leadership and management is in place.
“Most failures are failures of leadership,” he said.
Most of all, he plans to deliver the kind of change needed to save a hospital that only a year ago was in such bad shape officials said it might close.
“It’s death or change,” he said.
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