‘Care close to home’: A Q&A with Shawn McCoy of Deaconess Health System
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Shawn McCoy began his career at Evansville-based Deaconess Health System more than 30 years ago. In 2017, he became CEO of the independent, not-for-profit organization following roles as vice president of facilities and ancillary services and chief operating officer.
McCoy has a bachelor’s degree in industrial management from Purdue University and an MBA from Indiana University Bloomington. As one of IBJ Media’s Indiana 250 honorees this year in the health care & life sciences category, he spoke with Inside INdiana Business about steering his career away from the automotive sector and the challenges that continue to plague the health care industry.
You’ve been CEO at Deaconess since 2017, but you’ve worked for the health system for more than 30 years. Tell me about that journey.
I worked at Deaconess as a summer intern between my junior and senior years of college. I performed time and motion studies and did other miscellaneous projects. My major in college was industrial management, and I had minors in industrial engineering and manufacturing management.
I was really destined to work in the automotive industry. I always say this is probably the most important thing that happened in my life, the decision I made to come into health care at that point rather than going to work for General Motors. So I came to Deaconess and changed my life.
I started off in what’s now called our performance improvement department. I got to work on all kinds of neat stuff, various cost savings and efficiency projects, and I got to work on our initial rollout of our Deming-based Total Quality Management program, which now is called Continuous Quality Improvement or our Lean Six Sigma Group today.
When I started here, we were one hospital, and that’s our Midtown campus. Over time, I was fortunate enough to report to a lot of great leaders who gave me a chance in the organization. They mentored me and gave me opportunities to move up. I worked in a lot of different departments: purchasing, materials management, emergency, lab and radiology. Eventually, I moved into a vice president role over facilities and construction. I did that for a number of years and then moved into the chief operating officer role and then in 2017 into the CEO role.
Deaconess believes in promoting from within. Over the past 38 years, we’ve only had three CEOs: Tom Kramer, Linda White and now me. All three were internal promotions within Deaconess. Of course, I was fortunate enough to get great advice and direction from both Linda and Tom over the years. What’s really amazing to me is the CEO tenure today is 4.8 years, so we’re definitely an anomaly when it comes to that.
How has the health care industry changed since you started your career?
From a diagnostic perspective, technology has gotten a lot better over the past 30 years. We’re able to diagnose things more accurately, more quickly. Treatments have changed because things have gotten smaller. We have catheter-based implants now. We can do robotic surgery. Patients that 30 years ago would have had to have a large open surgery now can be treated minimally invasive through these new technologies.
The electronic medical record is another big thing that’s happening in health care. We have all this data now, and it helps us individualize treatments, coordinate care better and improve communication with patients.
COVID had a big impact on the health care industry. We were quickly overwhelmed, and we had a mass exodus of nurses from the profession worldwide. At a time when volumes were at their highest, we had the least amount of folks available to take care of patients. That labor shortage continues to be a major issue today. Plus, the majority of the health systems are losing money, have lost money this last year, and are really trying to figure out what they’re going to do.
Deaconess entered into a partnership with Ivy Tech earlier this year, investing $550,000 into the nursing program. How will this investment benefit both parties?
We felt like we needed to help be part of the solution at the end of the day for the countrywide nursing shortage that we have. Our investment funds a number of different programs, but one of them was to increase faculty who could teach. Part of the bottleneck is there aren’t enough faculty to increase the size of the programs. There was student demand to be in the nursing program but not enough faculty, so that was part of our investment.
I’m a fan of Ivy Tech. It’s a great option for students, and we think they’re a great partner.
Under your leadership, Deaconess has grown from five hospitals to 13 hospitals with services in three states. What sparked that motivation for growth?
Our motivation comes from our mission to serve patients in the communities of southern Indiana, western Kentucky and southern Illinois. Many of the hospitals in these communities that surround us need assistance. They’re small hospitals, and to be able to survive, they need a partner to be able to help them deal with the issues of today.
We partner with these facilities. We’ve invested in equipment, people, facilities and technology. We’ve recruited new physicians. Our goal is to improve the overall care that’s provided and also improve the services that are offered locally. Our goal is to keep patients and treat them locally rather than have them drive 150-200 miles to another facility. That’s been one of the reasons we’ve grown so rapidly, our philosophy around care close to home.
We also have a strong desire to remain independent. We’re a small, independent health system. We like being able to make our decisions locally, and we believe to maintain this independence, we have to have some scale. Then we can take advantage of synergies and back-office efficiencies.
Are there any plans for future expansion?
We’ve had so much growth here in the last three years. Our goal is to continue to invest now in these facilities, increase their services, improve their services and carry out our strategy of providing care close to home. That’s the phase that we’re in now: less acquisition, more operationalizing what we have.
Deaconess ranks No. 2 among the best hospitals in Indiana according to U.S. News and World Report and No. 119 among America’s Best Large Employers according to Forbes. What do these distinctions mean for the organization?
It’s an incredible honor to be recognized in that capacity by these organizations, but at the end of the day, it’s a testament to what our staff does each and every day for our patients and their families. To me, it’s a recognition of the care that they provide.
What does it mean to you to be named one of IBJ Media’s 250 most influential business leaders?
It’s certainly an honor, but to be honest, this is a recognition of Deaconess, not Shawn McCoy. I’m just the lucky one steering the ship right now, but it was our strong board of directors that set the foundation. Those leaders I talked about earlier—Linda White and Tom Kramer—set the foundation for our team to be able to come in now and develop what we’ve been able to do.
What’s next for you at Deaconess?
I still find health care exciting. It changes constantly. This is the toughest time I’ve seen in health care in 30 years. The challenges are significant, but that’s what gets me out of bed every day.
We believe our long-term success is going to be based on the quality folks we have on the team, so we put a lot of effort into the development of talent within the organization. My goal is to pass things on to the next generation, and my hope is that the next generation comes from within the organization, like I did, promoting from within. That’s where I’m focused next.