Gibson Area Hospital & Health Services | Gibson gets it! | Fall/Winter 2018

GibsonHospital.org 14 A thenaInsight , an online trade publication from Athena Health, featured Gibson Area Hospital in a recent article titled “Community Hospitals: This Is Your Moment.” The piece shines a light on exemplary rural hospitals that are bucking the trend of closing and instead thriving. In the excerpt below (shared with permission from the author, Gale Pryor), Rob Schmitt, CEO of Gibson Area Hospital & Health Services, provides insight to the success of the organization under his leadership. (For the full article, please visit athenahealth.com/ insight/community-hospitals-your-moment .) Expanded services, led by physicians Just south of Chicago, north of St. Louis, and west of Indianapolis, Gibson Area Hospital of Illinois has what most small rural hospitals do not: a convenient location. “We have physicians who live in Chicago and drive here for the day. Or physicians who want to be near Chicago but live in a small town,” says Rob Schmitt, CEO. As for patients, “Plenty of people still think bigger is better and go elsewhere, but data prove that our quality and care is as good or better than the big places.” In May 2018, Gibson Area Hospital earned a Patient Safety Excellence Award from Healthgrades, one of 26 hospitals in Illinois and the only critical access hospital to receive an award, which is given to the top 10 percent of hospitals in the nation. When Schmitt arrived in 2002 as the chief financial officer, the hospital was “quaint and small; functioning but pretty much like any other small, rural hospital.” But he saw the opportunity for the organization to grow. The previous CFO had put the financial house in order, the hospital had a strong board of directors and a medical staff rooted in primary care. “It had all the makings of a place that could become something better than it was,” says Schmitt. GAH featured in healt Read the full article at athenahealth.com/insight/ community-hospitals-your-moment . Rob Schmitt, CEO