Cover Story
Reaching higher
How John Stewart keeps employees striving for more in the midst of high honors at St.Vincent Heart Center
By Mark Scott
Smart Business Indianapolis | November 2009
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It’s not that John Stewart is disappointed to be named the top cardiac care hospital in all of Indiana for the fifth year in a row. He just wants to make sure he’s not the one at the helm when the streak ends for St.Vincent Heart Center of Indiana.
“One thing that keeps me awake now is that when you have been named by multiple sources as the leading program in the state for so many years, you don’t want your team to become complacent,” says Stewart, the company’s president and CEO.
“The good thing about transparency of data in health care these days is that your competition knows a lot more information about you, as does the general public, and that’s wonderful. But it causes everybody to do better. You can never rest on your laurels.”
Stewart was one of the lead consultants when the Heart Center first opened in 2000. He returned five years ago as president and CEO and faced the challenge of streamlining an operation that is now spread across multiple venues for its parent, St.Vincent Health.
The recent accolades show that the hospital is doing a lot of things right, but Stewart says there is always room for improvement. One area that needed to be bolstered was the camaraderie of employees spread across many different locations.
“I’m responsible for really cardiovascular care not only at both Indianapolis (Heart Center) locations but also all 18 of the ministries within St.Vincent Health,” Stewart says. “When you are working with multiple facilities, it’s only natural that people will focus on their own initiatives and less on the system’s initiatives.”
Stewart needed to get his 408 employees more focused thinking about what was best for the company as a whole.
“How do you keep educating individuals that they all play a part in it?” Stewart says. “How do you coach your leadership team so they understand and focus and stay away from the barriers to success? Typically, when you run barriers, it’s because people allow personalities and personal differences to get involved.”
Stewart had to show his employees the value of working together.
“We wanted to have the highest-quality, patient-centered cardiovascular care that we could deliver with the highest guest satisfaction,” Stewart says. “And we wanted to do it in an environment that was less about bureaucracy and hierarchy and more about the culture of teamwork.”
Here are some of the ways Stewart made it happen and, in so doing, helped St.Vincent Heart Center of Indiana earn $133.6 million in fiscal 2009 revenue and its fifth straight honor as the best heart hospital in the Hoosier State.
