ACHE Gold Medal Award: Keeping the patient in mind, far beyond the hospital

Chris Van Gorder is credited with orchestrating a multimillion-dollar turnaround and cultural transformation of Scripps Health, San Diego, after being named its president and CEO in 2000. But ask Van Gorder what the highlight of his career would be, and he'll tell you about flying into Haiti at 2 a.m. and assisting Scripps' chief medical officer in surgery following the 2010 earthquake.

“I couldn't have been more proud of our organization,” Van Gorder said. “And I got a chance to do things I may never get to do again.”

That included serving as a scrub nurse for Dr. Brent Eastman, trauma surgeon and retired Scripps' CMO, who says that the two actually operated together as a surgical team.

“The very survival of medicine in this country is going to require that physicians and hospitals and administrators learn to work together,” Eastman said. “The one singular purpose was to take care of the patient, and Chris understands that better than anyone I've ever known.”

It helped that Van Gorder is a licensed emergency medical technician, instructor for the American Red Cross and a reserve commander in the San Diego County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue Unit. But it is this focus on working together across departments to serve the patient that is one of Van Gorder's greatest attributes.

At each quarterly business meeting, Van Gorder starts the session with the presentation of a patient's case. The audience learns about the technical aspects of the case, but they also hear from the patient about how that experience impacted the person's life. Van Gorder said he often recalls the story of a 17-year-old girl who arrived at Scripps following a stroke. Thanks in large part to the neurointerventional radiology team, the clot in her brain was removed, and after some rehabilitation, she went to college on a volleyball scholarship. She later attended a Scripps management meeting with her father, at which he broke down crying while talking about the life-saving care his daughter received.

“That's why we're here,” Van Gorder said. Whether you are a patient financial services counselor or a groundskeeper, “we're all patient caregivers. That's a huge responsibility and that's where we're focused.”

Eastman said that perspective isn't that common in a chief executive. He said it's also rare for CEOs to create a physician leadership cabinet, which Van Gorder put together to engage Scripps' doctors in their decisionmaking and also create a partnership with them in running Scripps' business side. Eastman says no major changes or moves that would affect physicians were ever made without first taking the issue to their leadership cabinet for discussion and support.

“That was the kind of thing Chris created and embraced,” Eastman said. “I think what he's done to teach and listen and talk to these leaders, it's produced the people who are taking Scripps to a whole new level.”

In recognition of Van Gorder's leadership, the American College of Healthcare Executives named him a 2014 Gold Medal Award winner in the category of healthcare delivery organization. Van Gorder, 61, served the ACHE on its board of governors from 2006 to 2008 and as chairman-elect, chairman and immediate past chairman from 2009 to 2012.

As a recipient of the highest honor given by the college, Van Gorder is being recognized as someone who contributes to the improvement of healthcare services and community health, even beyond the borders of his organization.

But Van Gorder takes little credit for those successes. “If I have a skill,” he said, “it's that I surround myself with really smart and good people who are focused on the patient and absolutely determined to do a good job.”

He credits that ability—being able to size people up quickly and make rapid decisions—to having what he calls a street cop inside of him. That's because Van Gorder's early work was as a police officer, until a critical injury on the job put him in the hospital and ended his law-enforcement career. While Van Gorder was responding to a domestic dispute, a woman rammed her vehicle head-on into his squad car.

Van Gorder said that experience inspired him to enter healthcare, first as the department director of safety and security at Orthopaedic Hospital, Los Angeles, the same place where he recovered from his injuries. He returned to school, getting a master's degree in public administration/health services administration at the University of Southern California and then completing the Wharton CEO Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, he rose through the management ranks at facilities in Southern California, including Anaheim Memorial Hospital; Little Company of Mary Health Services, Torrance; and Long Beach Memorial Medical Center before his appointment at Scripps.

“I tell people that, for whatever reason, I fell up,” Van Gorder said. “My career was taken away from me, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But the worst day of my life ultimately became the best day.”

Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden