Health & Medical
Strength in numbers
How Doug Hawthorne merged 13 hospitals and 18,000 employees to build a new organization from scratch
By Robyn Davis Sekula
Smart Business Dallas | April 2008
Page 1 of 4
Ten years ago, Doug Hawthorne had to create a culture from
scratch.
He had just presided over the creation of Texas Health
Resources Inc. from 13 hospitals from three different organizations — Fort Worth-based Harris Methodist Health System,
Dallas-based Presbyterian Healthcare Resources and Arlington
Memorial Hospital.
The three organizations came together to create a large, faith-based, nonprofit health care system, and, as the CEO,
Hawthorne’s challenge was to get the thousands of employees of
this new system thinking about a common mission and goals.
“Initially, our effort, and mine particularly as the chief executive officer, was to help create a new culture,” Hawthorne says.
“That certainly was the most significant initial challenge for
me. In the past five years, once we made that turn of beginning
to understand the importance of the consolidation, the challenge has been to sustain and build on that culture to improve
our performance. ... Culture will trump anything else we do if
we don’t have it.”
By relying on a strategy of getting everyone involved, fighting to
retain top talent and striving to do more, Hawthorne now has the
organization’s 18,000 employees all working together toward common goals. Here’s how he did it.
