Lakewood Ranch Medical Center's new CEO brings experience to its expansion

Like many others, Rob Anderson sees Lakewood Ranch as a great place to raise a family. 

And that helped the father of two boys make a major career move: transitioning from two decades as a health care executive in Texas to his new role as CEO of Lakewood Ranch Medical Center.

“Lakewood Ranch is one of the fastest-growing communities in the country — why wouldn’t you want to be part of that?” says Anderson, 49. “And where the community sits in terms of its location, it’s a great place to be. So it was a good match.”

Anderson most recently served as CEO of Memorial Campus and Providence Children’s Hospital in El Paso. Prior to that, he was CEO for Tenet’s Sierra Campus and Specialty Campus; market chief strategy officer for The Hospitals of Providence Market; and administrator/COO of Providence Children’s Hospital, all in Texas.

He brings that experience with larger health care facilities to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center as it’s poised for its next phase of growth. “Everywhere you go, you always learn something,” says Anderson. “You learn from your failures. You learn from your mistakes, but you also learn what’s worked. The last two hospitals I was at were almost twice the size of this facility in terms of bed counts. But what’s here is ripe. It’s ready to expand and grow to meet what the Lakewood Ranch community needs.”

Listening tour

That includes the upcoming opening of a new tower adding 60 beds to the facility’s current bed count of 120 and the planned addition of service areas including a neonatal intensive care unit and a second cath lab that will be able to handle more complex procedures for cardiac patients.

“Learning from where I’ve been, in terms of larger hospitals with more complexity, more service lines and more positions, is going to help us and help me here at Lakewood Ranch because that’s what this hospital needs,” says Anderson. “That’s what I do: I build hospitals ... If we don’t have a service here, why don’t we have it here?”

Photo by Lori Sax

Since he was appointed CEO in April, Anderson hasn’t been shy about asking staff, board members and community residents about how they see Lakewood Ranch Medical Center. “I ask, ‘What would you do if you were in my shoes? What would you change?’” he says. “We want to be a community hospital in the sense that we’re part of the community. But I don’t want to be a community hospital in the sense of, oh, they can’t handle that ... as Lakewood Ranch grows, so do we.”

But he won’t pursue growth just for growth’s sake. It’ll be a balance of separating true needs from nice-to-haves or wants that aren’t a right fit for the hospital. “I’m not going to be everything to everybody,” he says. “Nor do you want me to be everything, because then if I only do little bits and pieces of it, I’m probably not as good. So we’re trying to find our service line niche and do it very well.”

Have impact

Lakewood Ranch Medical Center already has a lot of things going for it, like its quality of care and patient experience. It’s received recognitions such as an “A” Hospital Safety Grade from independent national nonprofit watchdog The Leapfrog Group and The Joint Commission Gold Seal of Approval. “It’s a lot easier to convince people to come to a hospital that is already providing high-quality care,” he says.

He plans to build on that not only through expanded capacity and service lines, but also by making improvements to things like emergency room wait times. “Could we do better? Yeah, we can,” he says. “The emergency room is your front line into a hospital. People don’t want to wait; they don’t want to sit around. They want to be treated well. And so I think for us it’s just expanding upon that. Our emergency room can be quicker, and that’s what we’re working on to make people feel comfortable.”

Staffing remains an issue for almost every hospital system out there, and Anderson will be keeping his eye on that. On the plus side, the turnover rate at Lakewood Ranch Medical Center is on the low end.

“People come here and they stay,” he says. “But there is competition. They’re building new hospitals here [in the general region], and they’re going to call my staff first because they’re trained well and they’re good. Our goal here is to treat people well so they want to stay, and I think we do that.”

Anderson admits he didn’t know his “why” when he first got into the health care business, the way a lot of physicians and nurses do. But that became much clearer to him as time went on.

“It’s the people,” he says. “I get to deal with people, and in my nonclinical way I’ve had the ability and the honor to be able to help hire, manage, educate and train health care providers to ensure they’re providing the best care for a patient.”

He also appreciates how his role gives him the opportunity to be part of the community both within and beyond the health care setting. “It’s giving back; it’s being part of boards,” he says. “I enjoy that. To me, I think that’s what’s exciting. Even when I looked at Lakewood Ranch and asked, ‘Why would I move here?’ It was because I felt I could be part of the community and make an impact.”