By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
After leaving Castleview Hospital in 2018, CEO Mark Holyoak has returned to the area and the hospital. Holyoak sat down with the KOAL Newsroom to discuss his return and his vision for the hospital moving forward.
“So truth be known, I never did want to leave in the first place when I left here, but I did what was needed for the company at the time. And so I’d always hoped that, hey, there’s going to be an opportunity to come back someday, but I didn’t know that it was going to happen,” said Holyoak. “When it did, I learned a lot and had some great opportunities in North Carolina and then most recently, in Washington State. But when this opportunity opened up to a community that I know and love, there was no discussion in our family. We knew this is exactly where we needed to come back to.”
Reflecting on the lessons he learned in North Carolina and Washington, Holyoak discussed techniques and strategies he would like to implement at Castleview. “Some of the things that I learned is that there’s some opportunity that we may be able to add some services that we haven’t done in the past. And we’re not going to do everything. There are some things that we’ll probably never do. We’ll probably never do brain surgery or open heart surgery. But there are some things that we can do, make sure that we do it well, and then we may start going down that path and providing some additional services. But my focus will always be on the services that we currently provide, making sure that they are delivered in a safe and quality fashion and then adding a little bit as time goes along.”
Continuing how he wants the hospital to evolve, Holyoak emphasized the community,” the big thing that I want is, and this is something that I did before when I was here for eight years, and that is to gain community input. And so I’m all ears. I want to hear what you all want and what are some things that we can do even better. So, listening to our community is the most important thing. And I want to make sure that is always important.”
As long as the hospital has existed, it has held the mission statement of “Making communities healthier.” Holyoak explained what this mission means to him: “Making communities healthier is not just what we’ve already talked about, about safe and quality patient care. And yes, that’s number one. However, there are many other ways that we can make the community healthier. It’s important that we’re involved in boards and committees throughout the community. And so community involvement is huge.”
Holyoak continued,” That goes along with sponsorships for some of the nonprofits and partners we have throughout the community. And so the other thing is it’s important for me as CEO of Castleview to be visible. And so you’ll see me out in the community at almost every event.”
Holyoak shared his vision for being visible, expanding on the idea of community involvement,” when I was here before, I was on the Chamber of Commerce board and very happy to jump right back into the Chamber of Commerce again. There are many other entities and nonprofit organizations that I served on, and I want to be involved there. And then our partnership with USU Eastern. We are so fortunate to have such an amazing educational organization here. And you heard from me years ago about the importance of ed and med, education and medicine. And together, when we partner, we make the communities healthier.”
Holyoak also took the time to emphasize the importance of rural health care: ” We understand that there’s still a choice, even though the closest hospital is over an hour away. There’s still a choice. And so this is your hospital, the entire community. This is your hospital. And so we want you never even to hesitate when you need health care. Say, hey, of course, I’m going to Castleview, and we’ll take care of you.”
The CEO added,” We’ve got amazing physicians, providers and staff here that genuinely care. The other thing that we do at Castleview that I’ve learned, you know, in some of my nationwide travels, is we provide individualized care. It’s so important that care is always provided in an individualized fashion. We have very high patient safety indicators. So, we are constantly assessing ourselves to see how we’re doing and what we can do to become even better. The quality indicators are very high and also patient satisfaction. So, the patient experience when someone comes to Castleview, making sure that experience is very positive. There’s a lot of anxiety going on when you need health care. And so it’s important to me to make sure that experience is top-notch, better than you would receive at another hospital or organization.”
Our penultimate topic of conversation was the direction Holyoak wants to guide the hospital as his tenure gets underway. “Do you know we’re already right in the middle of a replacement of our MRI? And so we’re looking at all our equipment, the technology we have, and what are some things we can upgrade? Is there technology that might be even a little bit better than what we have? It’s important that we always have state-of-the-art technology. And so, in our MRI, we found out that there’s some brand-new technology out there that we can bring in. And so that should be delivered soon and we’ll get that all implemented.”
Switching to the longer term, Holyoak shared,” Something else that we’re going to be doing is a behavioral health unit. And that’s something that I’ve experienced in North Carolina and Washington is behavioral health and providing for the mental health needs in the community. There are needs here. And so we’re going to be opening up a behavioral health unit later on. When we get closer, we can definitely share some more details with you. But as it is currently, if there’s someone with behavioral health needs that needs inpatient care, we don’t have that capability. But we will get all of that accredited and implemented soon. But that’s something that I have a big piece of my heart for and helping individuals with behavioral health issues.”
In closing, Holyoak stated,” I really look forward to meeting those who have moved in the last seven years that I haven’t met, working with you and then reacquainting with those wonderful friends that I’ve had for many, many years here.”