Peck to become permanent CEO at Athens Regional
Athens Regional Health System announced on Tuesday that Dr. Charles Peck loses the "interim" from his job title to become permanent CEO and president of the organization starting March 15.
"The medical staff leadership has had the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Peck for the last six months and is pleased to see him appointed as the permanent CEO," Dr. Carolanne Eisenhart, medical director of the emergency department and president of the ARMC medical staff, said in a news release. "We are very fortunate to have a physician executive with his knowledge, experience and skills join Athens Regional Health System."
The health system's decision to hire Peck as the permanent CEO is the end result of a weeks-long national search by a steering committee comprised of hospital personnel and board members.
"The CEO Steering Committee led a rigorous process resulting in a clear recommendation to hire Dr. Peck on a permanent basis, concluding with the board of trustees' unanimous approval of Dr. Peck's appointment," said ARHS Board Vice Chairman Jim Hopkins in a news release.
Prior to taking on the interim role at ARHS, Peck was the managing director of Navigant Consulting. He also previously served as president and CEO of Health Inventures LLC.
The reason Peck said he choose to wait until March 15 to officially become CEO and president was he needed the time to transition himself out of his partnership role with Navigant.
However, Peck said he plans to continue the work he started in September, when ARHS executives chose him to become interim CEO.
As CEO and president, Peck said he intends to purse three primary goals - establish Athens Regional among the top 10 percent in national rankings of hospital quality, safety and patient satisfaction; to create enough of a profit margin to allow the hospital to accrue top-notch caregivers and technology; and to make ARHS the employer of choice for health-care professionals in Clarke and surrounding counties.
Typically, Peck said, Athens Regional places in the top 25 percent of national hospital rankings.
Using analytics, Peck said he hopes to bolster that ranking and help the hospital become a better employer.
"We're in the process now of implementing new performance reviews and a performance management system," he said on Tuesday via telephone. "(Such reviews will measure) the quality and safety being delivered by our people."
Also, Peck wishes to monetarily reward employees performing well at their jobs.
As far as new technology is concerned, Peck hopes to properly finish the implementation of an electronic health record system by next month.
An EHR system is meant to improve efficiency and connectivity by providing doctors, nurses and other medical professionals with a shared data set.
Peck said about 85 percent of Athens Regional's medical staff now regularly use the EHR. Six months ago, fewer than 20 percent of physicians and nurses knew how the computer system worked.
A so-called disastrous implementation of the EHR system last year arguably cost former Athens Regional CEO and president James "Jamey" Thaw his job.
Thaw resigned in May, just days after more than a dozen Athens Regional physicians expressed their concerns in a letter that the new computer system might endanger patients. Former Athens Regional Chief Information Officer Gretchen Tegethoff resigned about a week after Thaw.
"We completely realigned the staff in the analytics and IT departments, and brought in new leadership," Peck said of how the health system resolved the EHR situation. "We brought people in who actually knew how to do this."
The hospital, Peck said, made "a significant investment" in EHR experts to sit with doctors and nurses and teach them how to work the computer system, often in one-on-one sessions.
"I think we still have things we can make better," Peck said of the EHR and other functions at Athens Regional. "It's never going to be perfect; you're always trying to improve."