When Harold “Hal” Hawk became president of Crown Battery Manufacturing in Fremont, Ohio, in 1999, he quickly decided that working within the healthcare system was the best way to combat rising costs.
“One of the largest single bills we had at Crown was our healthcare bill. I knew that I needed to get involved and understand the healthcare industry,” says Hawk, 50, president of 455-employee Crown, which makes automotive and commercial batteries.
The local hospital in Fremont seemed like the logical place to go, so Hawk joined the board of the Memorial Hospital Foundation in 2000 and the board of 102-bed Memorial Hospital in 2001. He served as chairman of the foundation board in 2005-06 and the hospital board in 2007-08. While he stepped down from the foundation board in 2008, he remains a member of the hospital board.
John Yanes—who became CEO of Memorial in October 2008—says he noticed immediately “the passion that (Hawk) exhibited about the hospital and its potential.”
For example, Hawk led fundraising efforts to help Memorial Hospital refurbish the physical plant to fight off “encroachment from the larger systems in Toledo, Ohio,” Yanes says. Some examples:
A $9.6 million, 30,000-square-foot surgery center, which opened in 2002, and includes six operating rooms, two endoscopy rooms and 18 private, preoperative and postoperative bays.
A $6.3 million, 29,000-square-foot building for physical and occupational medicine, which opened in 2007.
In addition to supporting capital projects, Hawk also has encouraged Yanes and other managers to reduce costs and increase revenue. For example, management revamped procedures for coding and documentation of emergency care that led the hospital to collect $1.2 million annually in additional revenue, Yanes says.
As a result of another strategy to increase revenue, the hospital in 2009 recruited three specialists in obstetrics and gynecology, adding $350,000 monthly to hospital coffers.
Overall profitability improved, too. The hospital earned nearly $2.8 million on operating revenue of $65.5 million in 2009, up dramatically from net income of $287,000 on operating revenue of nearly $62.3 million the previous year.
“While sometimes I feel the pressure,” Yanes adds, Hawk “also serves as motivation because he won't ask you to do something that he won't do himself.”
One example is Kids' Fest, which the hospital hosted last summer to promote safety and wellness. The free event included activities such as fire-extinguisher safety, an inflatable jump house and slide, a bicycle obstacle course and burlap-bag races. Hawk and his wife, Diane, not only donated money to help subsidize the event but “Hal was actually physically working the entire day,” Yanes says.
