Twenty-five years ago, John C. Federspiel left his native Pennsylvania to take the top job at a small and struggling community hospital in Cortlandt Manor. He was one of the few candidates to seek the post from outside New York state, which had an unenviable national reputation among hospital administrators for its severe regulatory climate.
The new president and CEO at Peekskill Community Hospital was 33. “I was the youngest CEO in the state at the time,” Federspiel said recently in his office at Hudson Valley Hospital Center. Renaming the community hospital 21 years ago to reflect its regional reach was one of the more controversial moves in his quarter-century tenure.
“When I started, things were financially in very, very poor condition,” he recalled. Still, “We had a great staff — a committed staff of employees,” that Federspiel tapped and promoted as he methodically rebuilt the hospital and its reputation.
“I waited a couple of years to move my family up from Philadelphia because I wasn”™t sure we were going to be able to pull this off.” Federspiel says he can smile now when admitting that.
In 1988, his first full year in Cortlandt Manor, the hospital lost $1 million while operating on an $18 million budget. “But by 1991, we had made $1 million,” he said.
The young CEO immediately focused on the emergency room, the hospital”™s “front door. Most of your medical admissions and your surgical admissions originate in the ER.”
“We focused a great deal of effort on the quality of what we were offering down there. That”™s probably the most significant aspect of what we did at that time.”
Four years after his arrival, the hospital”™s financial reversal won the American Hospital Association”™s turnaround contest for a three-year period of operation. “We were really on our way and we never looked back,” said Federspiel. “We”™ve had great success since then.”
In the ”˜90s, “It was kind of a hub-and-spoke approach” that drove the hospital”™s growth. While competing hospitals in the region were consolidating operations on central campuses, Hudson Valley Hospital Center departed from the prevailing trend and began opening local medical centers in northern Westchester and Putnam County communities.
“We realized that if people tried us, they liked us,” Federspiel said. “Like the candy bar manufacturer giving out candy on the street corner ”“ if we get people to try out our services, we get patients.”
“It wasn”™t so much taking market share” from competitors, “but really capturing what we should have had all along.” Those small community medical offices “gave us the traction to get our numbers up.”
Since his early years in the post, “We”™ve probably literally doubled all of our volumes from those days, by any measure. “Physically, we”™ve probably grown by at least three times. The medical staff has grown by three times.”
The hospital has about 1,400 full-time and part-time employees and operates on a $160 million budget, nearly nine times the budget inherited by the new CEO 25 years ago.
In 1993, Federspiel led the hospital through an approximately $28 million expansion on the Crompond Road site it has occupied since 1966. It was the first in a series of construction projects that have transformed the hospital”™s size and appearance.
“Once we had the service and the quality where we wanted to be, then we began to focus on the physical plant,” said Federspiel. “My feeling was that the physical appearance belied the services within.”
In January, the first tenants opened their doors in a medical office building attached to the hospital”™s new comprehensive cancer center. That 54,000-square-foot project followed the 2010 completion of an approximately $110 million expansion project that added a four-story, 83,000-square-foot patient tower to the 128-bed hospital.
“It was a very significant project, but desperately needed to be done,” Federspiel said of that major expansion, which also doubled the size of the emergency department and added a 450-space parking garage.
The CEO and his management team also have worked to improve employee satisfaction since the late 1990s. “We have a very unique employee culture that is also reflected in our medical staff. Â The collegiality and the cooperation make it a nice place to work,” he said.
Walking the halls of the hospital, the CEO shows an easy rapport with staff that is his signature style.
“I”™ve always been on a first-name basis with everyone in the hospital,” he said. “We treat people like we want to be treated, and I think that”™s been the key to our success.”
