ELKINS — Officials with Davis Health System and Vandalia Health say the recent leadership changes at DHS were necessary to move forward and better serve the community.

On June 17, DHS officials confirmed to The Inter-Mountain that President and CEO Vance Jackson was retiring, and former CEO Mark Doak will serve as interim president going forward.

Doak and David Goldberg, Vandalia Health Executive Vice President, CEO North Region, sat down with The Inter-Mountain recently to discuss the changes.

“There are two pieces to it, personalities and business, and how we move forward,” Doak said of the leadership changes. “From a business standpoint, there was a change. They were outstanding individuals, personality wise and so forth.

Goldberg

“Vandalia has a different way of operating. They started in January, seriously going through and saying, ‘We want to do something called integration.’ Integration says, if a quality meal costs $3 at Davis, and it costs $3.50 at Mon, then Mon wants to know, ‘How do we change our processes, and how do we learn from them, and how do we get our meal costs down to $3?’ How do we find best practices in all phases?

“Not everybody in administration can understand that process and how they’re bringing it all together,” Doak said. “There comes a time when decisions are made and it’s said, ‘Maybe it’s best for someone else to come in.’ Some people decided to retire and say, ‘That’s not for me.’ In other cases, they decided, ‘This isn’t the right person for the right job at this point in time. Personality wise, they’re great people. They have great skills and great talents. But for this organization to move forward, those may not be the same talents we need to accomplish what we want to do for the community.’

“Those decisions were made beyond me, those were decisions I wasn’t involved with. But sitting back and looking at it for the last month, I believe that’s kind of what happened.”

Goldberg added, “And those decisions were not made in a vacuum. There are no decisions that I, as the CEO of the market, make alone. We talk to the board members, we convene and talk to the stakeholders, to get a sense of what’s happening, how can we move forward as a new integrated organization.

“Mark joined us a little over a month ago when Vance retired,” Goldberg said. “Kathy Sturm, our previous chief nursing officer, left about a month ago. Our HR officer, Jon Steen, left. So we now have interim from Mon Health, we call ourselves ‘Vandalia North,’ that are coming in to be able to just coach and help at the local level. All the HR people, the nursing structure, it’s all the people that were here before, are still the ones here running it day to day. We’re just serving as interim while we do searches to fill those key roles and move forward.

“Mark was gracious enough to come out of retirement to help us stabilize, grow, find opportunity and then just get us back on path to where we need to be – instead of an independent health system, which is what Davis is today, to be part of an integrated larger organization, and the bench that we think brings value to help Davis continue with its multi-generational mission of local quality care.”

Goldberg said officials have been having group meetings with DHS employees to go over the changes.

“We just did town halls over the last week, here at Davis Medical Center, over at Broaddus Hospital and at Webster. Town halls are meetings with employees,” Goldberg said. “We put the numbers in front of them, we’re talking about the future, we’re talking about positive things coming into our organization.

“At the beginning of the next calendar year, Jan. 1, we’re all going to be in the same systems to do payroll, we’re going to be on the same financial systems, and we’re all going to be on the same health insurance. All of our employees are going to have the same benefits. We’re looking at retirement accounts, 401Ks, aligning those. So all of our employees get the same benefits, no matter where they’re at.

“During the town halls there were some questions asked, ‘Should we be worried about our jobs?’ And let me be very candid about what I said to them. I said, ‘Are you a good employee? Did you come here to do the right thing? Did you come in to take care of our patients?’ If the answer is yes to all of that, no problem. If you come in and you’re really bad, and you’re making mistakes and covering it up instead of us trying to deal with it, then we might need to talk. Everything in between is negotiable.

“We are hiring right now, significantly, nurses, rad techs (radiologic technologists), phlebotomists, house keepers, finance people, information technology people, all across. We have learning programs where we are taking people from Davis & Elkins College, kids in the high school, to teach them how to be a nurse of the future. How to be a phlebotomist. And we’re paying for that investment, to build the workforce of the future,” Goldberg said.

“So, we’re hiring. We’re paying. We’re doing market and merit adjustments for our current staff, because we need to be competitive and keep people moving with the cost of living. So we’ll be running that over the next few weeks, it’ll be effective in August. We’re doing well.”

In February 2023, it was announced that Davis Health System would join CAMC Health System and Mon Health System as part of Vandalia Health.

The combined health system is the second largest not-for-profit integrated health system in West Virginia. It includes more than 180 outpatient care locations, more than 70 specialties, and employs nearly 13,000 staff and providers.

Davis Health System includes Davis Medical Center in Elkins, Broaddus Hospital in Philippi, and Webster Memorial Hospital in Webster Springs. DHS employs nearly 1,000 healthcare professionals, according to the system’s LinkedIn page.

Mon Health System and Charleston Area Medical Center Health System merged in September of 2022 to form Vandalia Health.