ACHE Gold Medal Award: His mission: to improve healthcare the world over

The Russian city of Murmansk probably isn't mentioned often in U.S. healthcare discussions, but for Charles Evans, it represents a vivid example of how organizations, communities, even countries, can renew their commitment to healthcare.

While living in Jacksonville, Fla., in the 1990s—first as an executive at Memorial Hospital, and later as president of HCA's First Coast Health Network—Evans became involved with the city's sister city project with Murmansk, a port city in far northwestern Russia. As the Soviet Union was breaking up, there was an interest from the Russian government in building infrastructure that included healthcare, and Evans was tasked to help, traveling back and forth between Jacksonville and Murmansk to provide consultation.

“It was the first time I had ever really observed the difference that professional management makes in healthcare,” he said. According to Evans, in most parts of the world, healthcare managers are clinicians with little to no management preparation, and don't usually have the master's of business or master's of healthcare administration typical of U.S. executives.

“It took what had been an intellectual understanding to a very personal understanding,” Evans said. “What a difference we make by professionally managing these services.”

That recognition inspired an increased level of involvement in the field for Evans—including serving a three-year term, beginning in 2004, on the board of governors of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the same organization that has named him a 2014 Gold Medal Award winner for nondelivery healthcare organizations. After retiring from his position as president of HCA's Eastern Group at the end of 2006, Evans founded the not-for-profit International Health Services Group in 2007, to help with global healthcare access projects.

“Charlie is always focused on the improvement of healthcare and its mission,” said Sissy Stevinson, vice president of human resources for the clinical and physician services group at HCA, the Nashville-based for-profit healthcare system that operates hospitals and surgery centers in 20 states.

Thanks to a career that has spanned more than three decades, with leadership positions at both not-for-profit hospitals in Indianapolis and Jacksonville and then across regions within for-profit HCA, Evans “has such a vast knowledge of how healthcare can be improved,” Stevinson said.

And despite the difference in organizational structure, Evans says a common theme exists in meeting the needs of these groups. “What really matters is culture,” he said.

Evans, 66, shares that expertise with his peers by promoting leadership teams and continuous learning opportunities.

But Stevinson says the best way to learn “is by watching Charlie as a leader.” He has such a passion for doing what is right and what is best for patients, she said.

That passion extends far beyond the walls of the hospitals he's served and the borders of the U.S. Evans' Murmansk experience inspired him to “do something in the international arena before I ran out of gas”—launching the International Health Services Group.

The organization is a foundation designed to support development of health services in underserved locations throughout the world. It engages local groups that already have established relationships in the country and partners with them to supplement their healthcare needs as part of their larger missions. Depending on the assessment, the IHSG assists in providing volunteers, fundraising, construction of new facilities, medicines, supplies, equipment, training and recruitment.

“We assess what their needs are, what our competencies are, and where we can add value based on due diligence,” Evans said. The goal is that each of these projects will eventually become self-sustaining.

Evans tries to visit each project location annually, including its site in Nakuru, Kenya, where the group got its start. Work in that area has focused on developing health services for a local orphanage, an outpatient clinic and a women's center. The IHSG has been working with other not-for-profits, such as the Beech Foundation and MedShare International, to purchase and ship medical supplies and equipment to the clinic and secure transportation for its patients.

“The folks in Nakuru are as poor as you can imagine,” Evans said. But he tells how the congregation of a church there raised nearly $7,000 one week in a special collection to support the clinic. When asked how they managed to do that, one of the members responded. “We love with all of our hearts.”

It's a story that Evans told at nearly every talk during the time he served as ACHE chairman, and it seems to encapsulate his own mission of leadership.

“It reminded me of the power and importance of love in our work and what we can do to accomplish great things even when there aren't a lot of resources,” Evans said. “It's such an important reminder for us as healthcare executives—not to get so consumed by the business that we lose contact of staying in love with our communities.”

Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden