Steve Bateman

First focus: Treat people like family

When Steve Bateman became CEO of St. Mark’s Hospital in 2005, he often reflected on advice from Catholic nuns at the first hospital he ever worked at some 23 years earlier.

“The nuns often spoke of treating patients as if they were the Lord Himself, or as if the patient is the most loved person in your life. That stuck with and guided me my entire career.  Just thinking about that would relieve my concerns and doubts about the complexities and difficulties St. Mark’s faced within the healthcare industry and local market, many of which were out of my control. What was in our control, and what mattered most and carried the day, was how we treated others – and that’s still true,” said Steve.

With a focus on compassionate, quality healthcare during Steve’s tenure, the hospital’s mission statement became: “To provide superior healthcare services to our patients as if they were our own family,” and its vision statement became: “To be Utah’s Finest Hospital.”

Utah’s first hospital continues making history

During Steve’s 12 years as CEO at St Mark’s, Utah’s first hospital continued making remarkable forward progress – advancing in scope, outreach, technology and teamwork. Each step and accomplishment resulted from a tremendous team effort.

“At St. Mark’s, we have people of different backgrounds, different training, expertise and opinion – to get everyone pulling in the same direction while enjoying doing so was a thrill. That was always the Holy Grail for me,” Steve said.

Together, the Hospital teams:

• Opened Utah’s first freestanding Emergency Room.
  • Providing 24/7 emergency medical care, Taylorsville Emergency Center opened in 2015. The fully equipped emergency center became an immediate success; so, Steve and the administrative team laid the groundwork for a second similar facility now known as the West Valley Emergency Center.
• Welcomed Lone Peak Hospital to the HCA family.
  • “In my opinion, St. Mark’s Hospital was the mother that birthed Lone Peak Hospital,” said Steve. By first opening the Lone Peak Emergency Department as well as Lone Peak Imaging Center in Draper, administrators formed the foundation for the community hospital that opened its doors two years later, in 2013.
• Increased market share and patient loyalty amid increasing competition.
  • During Steve’s leadership, Intermountain Medical Center, a nearly 450-bed hospital only two miles away in Murray, opened, along with five other new hospitals in the St. Mark’s service area. Plus, the two major competitors to St. Mark’s refurbished or expanded most all of their existing facilities. Despite the dire predictions of many, St. Mark’s held its own and even increased in market share, amid this substantial increase in competition.” Steve said. “I thought that was a remarkable reflection on the level of talent and persistence of people at St. Mark’s, not to mention the remarkable loyalty of its patients.”
• Offered new services.
  • To better meet the needs of the community and strengthen its position as the flagship hospital of HCA in the region, during Steve’s time there St. Mark’s developed a new inpatient rehabilitation center, vascular laboratory, inpatient behavioral health unit, and an intensive outpatient mental health unit. New operating rooms and imaging equipment were added. A new, St. Mark’s Hospital-based and operated, surgical center was put into service on 45th South. Plus, major steps forward in patient safety and quality were taken in the form of the implementation of new physician-based 24/7 services, including intensivists, hospitalists, OB hospitalists/laborists, trauma surgeons, and the creation and development of large and market-leading cardiovascular and OB/GYN physician groups. Further, all key physician specialties were secured for 24/7 ER on-call service.
• Employed and united 170+ physicians.
  • When Steve joined St. Mark’s Hospital, only three physicians were employed by the Hospital. By the end of his tenure, approximately 175 physicians associated with St. Mark’s had become employed by HCA. “By unifying physicians through HCA employment, we stabilized the demand for services while integrating more physicians with the clinical processes, operations, and strategies of the Hospital. Doing so produced significant improvements in patient safety, quality of care, and in the overall working environment for physicians and employees alike. Among HCA’s largest hospitals, St. Mark’s improved from the third quartile to the first quartile in terms of employee engagement. That was an enormous change and required a tremendous amount of effort, but without that change, our Hospital would not have achieved the excellence that it did” Steve said.
• Implemented a new electronic clinical information system.
  • During the earlier part of Steve’s tenure at St. Mark’s, he often asked employees and physicians, “What would be the most important thing we could do to help improve patient care and your individual working environment at St. Mark’s?” The most common response, by far, was to install a more advanced electronic information system. Fortunately, an opportunity came for Steve to “volunteer” St. Mark’s to be the test site among all HCA hospitals to implement the “Epic” system, what most experts considered to be the nation’s finest and rapidly advancing electronic health record or clinical information system. Steve said his strategy and motivation in this regard was three-fold: First, to improve patient safety and quality of care. Second, to further improve the working environment for employees and physicians. And third to improve the competitive posture of St. Mark’s overall. In 2013, Epic was installed. Steve said it was something like tearing the nervous system out of the hospital nearly all at once and installing something new. “Like trading in a Yugo for a Maserati,” he said. A major effort, the new system is meeting its goals.
• Renovated all inpatient areas (and most outpatient areas too).
  • The hospital looked “tired,” so it received an aesthetic facelift. With the renovation, all inpatient areas and most outpatient areas transformed into updated, modernized spaces. This renovation ultimately pointed out the need for larger, safer, and more comfortable inpatient rooms. This recognition led to the planning and design of the large renovation and addition construction process now underway at St. Mark’s.
• Qualified for Level 2 Trauma Center.
  • This years long team effort paid off shortly after Steve’s retirement, when St. Mark’s Hospital received official Level 2 Trauma certification.

No. 1 attributes: Patient loyalty and remarkable staff.

Steve says the decades-long legacy of patient loyalty and patient-focused staff helped make strategies and developmental plans for St. Mark’s success become a reality. He added, “Every major step forward, new service, or achievement was conceived and pushed forward by extraordinary physicians and remarkable leaders and staff other than me. All I did was plant the flag high on the hill, try to keep them moving forward together in the right direction, allocate needed resources, and then get out of the way.”

“I was CEO of four different HCA hospitals before I got the privilege of coming to St. Mark’s, and I had never seen a larger or more loyal group of patients. That’s a treasure – something very hard to find or duplicate!” Steve said. “And I think the medical staff at St. Mark’s is a real jewel. The roster of physicians reflected the environment of an academic/teaching hospital, the breadth and scope of a large medical center, but at the same time the friendliness and cohesion of a smaller hospital. St. Mark’s became big enough to do very sophisticated things, but remained “small” enough in culture to attract and retain friendly and courteous people who enjoyed working with each other. I think this made patient feel “at home” at St. Mark’s, when they didn’t want to be there in the first place. We worked hard to ensure that no one felt like just another patient, just another employee, or just another physician.

To stay in tune with and support the Hospital’s heartbeat and cultivate one-on-one relationships, Steve went on rounds almost every day he served as CEO. He visited every department, and often the off-campus ER, imaging centers, and surgery center spending time with employees, patients and family members.

“If I did it right, rounding took me the better part of 4.5 hours. I remember sharing a job with a delightful and very hard-working housekeeper one morning, and I don’t think I was ever as tired at St. Mark’s as from the four hours I spent one day cleaning with the housekeepers,” Steve said. “Through rounding, I learned about supporting people, solving problems and making better strategies. And if I came across a situation where I could help somebody – especially where they wouldn’t know that it was me – well, that was pure joy. The employees at St. Mark’s are the glue that holds it all together.

First on deck: Training future leaders

Steve says that joy from helping others transformed the position of CEO into more than a job – it became a calling. Over the years, he found himself relishing the opportunities to serve others, optimally without them knowing it, and learning much about what is truly important in life along the way. And now, as a professor at Weber State University, Steve teaches academic and life lessons to future leaders in healthcare administration.

“My time at St. Mark’s was challenging as well as rewarding.  Although there are days when I really miss working in the Hospital, the experiences I was blessed to have there really prepared me for this next stage in life, where I’m trying to serve young people. I’m teaching them what I learned with the hope that they will do it better than I did,” Steve said. “I tell a lot of war stories. I think students appreciate the true tales from my time at St. Mark’s Hospital, because they illustrate academic principles applied in real life healthcare situations.”

Same as the first: Steve’s message to St. Mark’s Hospital

Reflecting on 150 years of service and his personal tenure at St. Mark’s led Steve to a full-circle message for the hospital’s future:

“St. Mark’s will continue to thrive if people always remember to put the patient first. Everything else will take care of itself. If that attitude continues – the market share, the steadiness of employment, the finances, the ability to compete and even the complexities we don’t know about yet – they will all be taken care of,” Steve said. “Remember to put the patient first and treat other people the way you hope your family would be treated. If you follow those two things, the future of St. Mark’s Hospital is very bright.”