December 10, 2007
Shop Talk: Tim Jones
By Christina Davis
Healthy Operations
Tim Jones was recently named chief operating officer and administrator of Leonard Morse Hospital in Natick, part of the Vanguard Health System. Jones replaced Edward Moore, who left the post to serve as president and CEO of Harrington Memorial Hospital in Southbridge. He comes to Leonard Morse from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Boston. Here, he discusses his new job, his entrepreneurial background and how he ended up in the health care business as a teenager.
Tim Jones, chief operating officer and administrator of Leonard Morse Hospital.What are your job responsibilities as chief operating officer and administrator for the hospital?
Tim Jones, chief operating officer and administrator of Leonard Morse Hospital.
Operationally I'm responsible for all activities of the hospital as well as financial performance of the organization. Most importantly, I'm responsible for making sure that the quality of care and the safety net we provide for our patients is the highest priority.
The previous hospital you worked for, St. Elizabeth's, is part of the nonprofit Caritas system. Leonard Morse is part of Vanguard Health, which is a for-profit company. What are the differences that you see shifting from a nonprofit to for-profit facility?
I'll preface my answer this way: I've owned my own health care services company, so I've been on that side where there is a need to, for lack of a better term, feed your family and have the opportunity to make sure that you can pay your bills. For nonprofits there's a mantra that says, "no margin, no mission." What that essentially means is, even though you are a nonprofit, you still have to make money because that supports your mission.
I think the main difference is the attention to financials is a little more focused in a shorter time period at a for-profit hospital. So, instead of a quarterly review of financials, there's a monthly review of financials. And that's not a bad thing actually. If you look at nonprofit organizations that are successful, they're modeling that type of behavior.
Can you talk a little bit more about the company you owned?
For a three-year period, I, along with two business partners, owned a supply-chain management consulting company called Health Care Logistic Services. We would do many different types of things. Basically it was a boutique business in that we would go into health care companies like a community hospital and try to enhance their supply chain processing performance and bring savings to the table.
Did you learn things owning your own business that you've applied to your work now?
When you own your own business, you're wondering when you're going to get paid. It forces you to execute. I think if there was one skill that hopefully I learned to develop in that time period it was that you've got to close the deal and you've got to be able to deliver on what you say you're going to deliver.
What are some of the financial pressures that hospitals are dealing with?
Not particular to this hospital, just in the industry, clearly you have the trends of declining reimbursement, which is probably the biggest financial trend and the most important one.
If you had a magic wand and could fix everything that's wrong with the health care system, is there one thing that you'd like to change?
I think the payment system, and I'm not sure that there's an easy answer for that. I don't know if universal health care access is the answer. I think everyone should have access to the system and how you do that is probably way beyond my capability.
How did you end up working in the field of health care?
I went into health care because I started out as an 18-year-old kid wheeling patients around for an oncology center and said, 'You know, I really like this. It's really great to be connected to people in this way.' And as luck would have it they opened a radiation therapy school in Orange County (Calif.) and I was able to get accepted into that. Two years later I was out treating cancer patients as a young person.
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