When Ketul Patel became president and CEO of Wellstar Health System in Marietta, Ga., in October, he stepped into an 11-hospital system with more than 34,000 employees. Six months in, he has a clear vision: grow the $8 billion system across the Southeast while keeping care rooted in the communities it serves.
Mr. Patel joined Wellstar after serving as CEO of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Tacoma, Wash., and as president of CommonSpirit Health’s Pacific Northwest region. There, he led the 2021 merger of CHI Franciscan and Virginia Mason and oversaw the launch of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health Care Network, a model that provides support to independent hospitals while allowing them to remain self-governed.
Now at Wellstar, he is focused on clinical growth, expanding rural access and building a system that can scale without losing local care.
“Our clinical destination is not only a big part of who we are now, but will continue to grow,” Mr. Patel said during a fireside chat April 15 at Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting. “We have a deep commitment to being the Southeast destination for clinical care and being known for quality, safety and patient experience.”
He noted that patients travel to Wellstar from across the region for cardiovascular services and neurosciences. The system also includes one of only two hospitals in Georgia focused exclusively on children: Wellstar Golisano Children’s Hospital of Georgia in Augusta.
“When you look at the next few years, there’s going to be quite a bit of growth, our clinical programs will be more and more well known, and that’s something we’re going to focus on for years to come,” Mr. Patel said.
He also discussed the Wellstar Digital Care Network, a telehealth-based program that supports rural hospitals across Georgia by providing specialist access and clinical collaboration, as well as the system’s approach to culture and financial resilience.
Editor’s note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What was the challenge you were trying to solve with the Wellstar Digital Care Network, and what impact are you seeing so far?
Ketul Patel: When I came to Georgia at the end of October, one of the most surprising things to me was the number of rural hospitals in the state. There were more and more hospitals challenged for workforce and challenged for care. We scaled the Digital Care Network a couple of years ago, and now 24% of the state’s rural hospitals are part of it.
I’ll give you an example. There’s a hospital just west of Savannah in Candler County that had an average daily census of about two to three, was in very significant financial distress and was very close to closure. They became part of the Digital Care Network, their average daily census continued to grow, and they had pretty significant access to subspecialty and specialty care. In our state, over 50% of hospitals are in counties that are maternity healthcare deserts. That’s a staggering number, and we’re finding ways to support maternity needs virtually through our Digital Care Network.
Before a hospital became part of our Digital Care Network, over 70% of patients were leaving for care. After becoming part of it, 30% are leaving for care. That’s huge. We all know that if you have family members, you want them to be comfortable and as close to home as possible so that family can be part of their healthcare journey. It’s a deep commitment we’ve made, and our board and leadership team are very focused on making sure we improve the health status of our state.
Q: How do leaders ensure that culture remains something that truly shapes daily behavior on the ground?
KP: PeopleCare is a brand promise, but if you come into the Wellstar family, it lives within our 34,000 team members. Fortune magazine has recognized us for eight years as one of the top places to work. We don’t chase awards, but we’re very proud of the fact that we’re being recognized for the culture that we have.
You have to connect with your staff members who are closest to the work — whether it’s at the bedside or working in the laundry facility — because you’re going to know more if you connect with your staff. Many years ago, when I was an administrative fellow, a board chairman took me under his wing and said, “If you want to be an effective leader, you have to live your life on an elevator.” He explained that you have to connect at every level of the organization — whether it’s a staff member, a supervisor, an executive leader, someone at the board level or out in the community. I live my healthcare journey in that way.
What we found so unique at Wellstar is that in many places I’ve worked, we had grandparents and grandkids working in the same organization. That tells me the culture is so good that when people go home, they’re telling their kids, and then their grandkids, about wanting to work there. We’re drawing generations to become our primary health system, and we’re very proud of that.
Q: With potential Medicaid funding reductions and ongoing reimbursement pressure, how are you building financial resilience?
KP: There have always been healthcare financial challenges. Reimbursements change. The way the flow of funds works changes. I keep going back to three things because they give us focus so we don’t worry about what we can’t control.
First, our cost structure was just too high — period. We were slow in adopting technology and slow in changing our workforce. The pandemic forced us to think in a different way, and that’s helped us evolve. We have to be a lot more efficient and find ways to deeply invest in education so that people stay close to home and we rely more on our own workforce rather than outside resources. Second, you always have to keep quality, safety and patient experience at the top of mind, because that will drive every decision you make and every resource need you have. Third, you have to listen to your staff, because they know what you can do more efficiently and more effectively — how do you reduce waste, how do you reduce workflow burden.
And given where we sit geographically, we have the ability to deeply invest in growing communities because the Atlanta metro area is booming. Part of my job is also to educate our legislators. I’ve gotten very involved with legislative leaders at the senatorial level, the governor’s office and with members of Congress. One of the biggest challenges in our state is that our health status is one of the worst in the country, and people are leaning in because they’re not proud of that. We have to change that.
Q: Where do you see the biggest opportunity for digital infrastructure to fundamentally transform how health systems operate?
KP: This is probably a significant understatement, but we are so far behind as an industry in utilizing technology for consumer behavior, patient-facing experience and clinical outcomes. Look at something so simple: If you’re on Delta, you can sign in with your SkyMiles number, and if you watch a movie, the next time you sign in it tells you exactly where you left off. Yet think about the number of times we walk into a health system and have to repeat our information over and over. We are deeply looking at ways to stop that redundancy for our patients. We have a partnership with CLEAR that allows patients to have a much more streamlined experience when coming to our facilities, and we’re piloting facial recognition at one of our hospitals.
We also have a company called Catalyst that we’ve invested in to support startup companies looking for ways to clinically transform care. We invest in companies that will, over time, deliver a return, but more importantly, can they allow us to do our work better and do what’s right for our patient experience? Technology is, in my view, a tremendous enabler if you do it right, and we need to do it faster than our industry has been doing it over the last 25 years.
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