Pamela Meyer says she spent the last 14 years paying her dues, and now she can hardly wait to show the world what a really smart risk taker, staked with a $48 million capital budget, can do for an institution caught between a community hospital mentality and a major medical center dream.
Meyer, 39, speaks with the confidence of a woman who has achieved a life goal earlier than she once thought possible. She is the recently appointed president of Edward Hospital in Naperville, occupying since May 2, the corner office suite. She replaced John Whitcomb, who resigned in February.
Meyer makes no apologies for her frankly feminine ways. She has a personal style that leans heavily on the side of people pleasing, a practice borrowed from her days as a cheerleader for the West Chicago Wildcats. She favors dresses over suits, and prefers crepe to flannel. If her wardrobe and the job seem to clash in this dress-for-success culture, that`s someone else`s problem, Meyer says. And if wearing a black or navy-blue suit to work everyday is a prerequisite for success ”then I`m willing not to be a success,” she adds matter-of-factly.
As the mother of three children, Meyer enjoys swapping mommy stories with the other women on the staff. Yes it`s true, she tells one of them, she once really did walk into an early morning conference with a nugget of Sugar Smacks cereal stuck on her collar. But Meyer insists she has the mind set, at least in part, of a man.
”I really think my self-esteem is directed like a man. I judge myself by how much money I`m making and by how much control and influence I have,” she says, shaking her head and grimacing in self-disapproval.
Meyer is a woman clearly used to doing things her way, backed by a track record of parlaying crisis into profit. She was hired away from her job as chief operating officer at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn ”to be an agent for change at Edward Hospital,” she says.
According to the Illinois Hospital Association, Meyer is only one of 32 women (compared to more than 220 men) in the state who are hospital chief executive officers or administrators. Of those, a dozen are nuns who head hospitals owned by a religious order.
Meyer was chosen by the hospital`s board of directors over several other more experienced, and more conservative, men.
”I`m a risk taker,” she says. ”I told the board, if they hired me, I would always tell the truth, and I would call the shots as I saw them. But I also told them, if they wanted a person who was afraid of confrontation or moving ahead, it wouldn`t be me.”
Board chairman Norris Shehan says Meyer outdistanced her competition handily: ”Talent has no sex. We were interested in finding a dynamic person who was willing to weigh options and take a business risk. Pam can assess risk and knows how to minimize that risk. That was attractive to us.”
Hospital management is risky business these days, and Meyer says, ”I handle risk by being bold. The profit margins are narrowing every year. Everybody is trying to beat out their competition. It takes high level skills to pull it off without going bankrupt.”
Edward Hospital is banking on Meyer`s skills to do just that. In the next 18 months, the hospital will spend about $48 million on a hospital building program that will trash the existing medical-surgical facilities and catapult the hospital into a first class, private-rooms-only institution for Naperville`s well-heeled, well-insured, white-collar clientele.
It was either that or forfeit the area`s lucrative health care market to nearby competitors, including Hinsdale Hospital to the east, Central Du Page Hospital to the north and Copley Memorial Hospital to the west.
The Edward campus will house several new specialty buildings. Heading the list is a $30 million, five-story bed tower, which will replace with 165 private rooms the 163 beds the hospital currently maintains. Meyer plans to equip some of the luxury units with amenities such as carafes of chilled wine and a bedside computer terminal for the business person in need of quick access to an electronic spread sheet.
”It takes a long time for perception to change, but after we build the bed tower, we`ll look like Good Samaritan-we`ll look like a major medical center-and then some,” Meyer says.
Additionally, a $6 million, 60,000-square-foot physicians` office building opened for business last month, and a $5-million health and fitness center is set to open this month. A $7-million, 84-bed psychiatric hospital, which is targeted for completion next year, will be run jointly by Edward Hospital and Psychiatric Institutes of America, a 20-year-old Washington, D.C. corporation.
And that`s just for openers.
”We`ve got a 50-acre campus, and I`m going to fill it up,” Meyer pledges. ”We`ll have to build even more buildings. By 1993 we`ll have a 450- bed hospital with advanced services in every area but spinal-cord injury, burns and dialysis, with an occupancy close to 80 percent. The average is only 64 percent. We`ll have a good mix of medical staff, including about 400 doctors.” There are now 220 physicians on staff at Edward.
Meyer says she has a three-year plan to bring on line several advanced services such as cardiac catheterization and angioplasty. Both procedures require expensive equipment and specially trained physicians and staff.
To generate the money to fund her proposals, Meyer plans to start by immediately enhancing obstetrical services because, she says, ”That`s where we can get the biggest bang for our dollar. Women are essentially the health care brokers for their families. They make 75 percent of the health care decisions for their families practically forever. So if they go to Central Du Page Hospital to have their babies, they will take their husbands and children there for orthopedic or pediatric services, or whatever they need.”
Next on Meyer`s hit list for improved services is the emergency room, which recorded 28,000 visits in 1987. ”It needs more space and a design that gives patients more privacy. We need to reduce the turn-around time (a source of frequent patient complaint),” she says.
”Then we`ll tell our story to the public. We`ll tell them we`ve got the equipment, we`ve got the doctors, and we`ve got the private rooms.”
That may not be enough, though, if Meyer`s counterpart at Copley Memorial Hospital in Aurora has his way. Copley`s president, Gregory Lintjer, says he has plans, too. And they include going head-to-head with Meyer in a competition for a piece of the lucrative Naperville market.
Copley plans to build a new four-story hospital and physician office complex, west of the existing downtown Aurora facility at a 34-acre site adjacent to the Fox Valley Mall. That will put Copley in Naperville`s back yard. The site is located at the intersection of Route 34 and Commons Drive, just a stone`s throw from Naperville`s western boundary. Lintjer estimates Copley`s $55-$60 million ”medical mall” will be completed by 1995. Copley Immediate Care Center is already in operation on the site, and two office buildings are under construction.
Lintjer contends that Copley`s recent affiliation with Rush-Presbyterian- St . Luke Medical Center will lure patients away from Edward Hospital.
Meyer counters Lintjer`s strategy saying, ”With that affiliation, they`ve got to contend with a bureaucracy we don`t have. Here we have control over our own destiny. We`ll bring in medical specialists who will match Rush`s big name. I think we`ll beat them.”
For all her ambition, self-confidence and success, Meyer admits she is a woman sometimes at odds with herself. Her insecurities, she says, stem from a childhood steeped in high expectations. Her compulsion for perfection, which she says, ”drives my family crazy,” means she spends every waking minute trying to be the perfect career woman, the perfect housekeeper, the perfect daughter, the perfect wife and the perfect mother.
Meyer is a West Chicago native. She was born at Delnor Community Hospital in St. Charles, where her parents, Paul Kuhl, M.D, and Dorothy Kuhl, M.D., maintained a joint general practice for 18 years. Meyer`s father died five years ago.
Meyer`s husband of 17 years, David, is a Wheaton attorney who specializes in defending medical malpractice claims. Their common business interests spill over into lively discussions in the kitchen of their home in Lisle.
The Meyers have three children, Kelly, 11, Nicholas, 9, and Layne, 6. After Kelly was born, Meyer agreed to quit her job and stay at home to care for her infant daughter. That arrangement lasted four months. ”Watching a sleeping baby, even though I loved her so much, didn`t give me self-esteem,” she says. ”I did what was easiest for me. I went back to work. I felt compelled to work.”
A strong work ethic was ingrained from early childhood. Meyer and her sisters worked at their parents office from the time they were in sixth grade. They stocked the pharmacy, did urine tests, filing and ran errands. ”We hated it” she recalls.
Dr. Dorothy Kuhl, Meyer`s mother, now 67 and a practicing psychiatrist in Oak Brook, remembers it differently: ”Pam was always ambitious and went out and hustled for jobs, even though she didn`t have to work.”
She says of her daughters drive for perfection and career success: ”I take some credit for that. I remember having a talk with her when she was a high school senior. I told her to aim high and not to settle for a traditional woman`s job.”
Meyer worked at several part-time jobs after high school and during college vacations from her alma mater, the University of Iowa, where she majored in economics and hospital administration. She collected wages and tips as a bartender, a motel maid, a sweeper at a beauty shop, a waitress, a golf starter and a clerk at a clothing store.
”Those jobs taught me a lesson. I decided I was going to be educated, because I saw that people had no respect for the people who did those jobs, even though we worked very, very hard. Lots of hard work. And no respect. That`s what I learned.”
Meyer rates her parents divorce when she was 13 years old as the most traumatic event in her life. In times of family stress, it`s not unusual for a sibling to step forward and assume the duties of the missing parent.
”Pam took on the parenting role,” says her younger sister, Patricia Stowell of Wheaton. ”That`s why she`s where she`s at today. She sees a problem and just steps in and takes over.”
Stowell describes her relationship with her sister as ”mutual best friends,” adding, ”She`s my guide post. I turn to her for everything. She can put things in perspective for me. But Pam is an over-achiever, and she made a lot of sacrifices. She`s under an incredible amount of stress.
”She has a car phone we call the crisis line. When she calls, her conversation will range from, `My God, such-and-such employee quit,` to `What will I wear?` ”
David Meyer says he understands his wife`s stress: ”We often talk about whether or not this is a reasonable way to live. But as far as I`m concerned, it`s no less reasonable for me to stay home than for her to give up her career and stay home.”
Neither option is feasible at this time, they say, and because the Meyers each put in a 50-hour work week and their first priority ”is to spend time with the kids,” there`s little time left over for hobbies, relaxation or even each other. David says it`s difficult.
”Most people prior to our generation who were high achievers or in positions of responsibility became consumed by it. They had support systems behind them-usually a wife-to take care of things. In our case, Pam doesn`t have that and I don`t either. We do it, to the extent possible, for each other. No matter how crazy things get at work, we know we`ll get through the day together.”
In a more reflective mood, Meyer relaxes and fantasizes that if she hadn`t become a hospital executive she would have chosen an entirely different career. ”I would have been a ballerina. I took lessons for years, but that was a small town dance studio,” she says, her voice trailing.
Meyer volunteers that her idea of a dream vacation isn`t spending a week on the beach in the Bahamas. ”I`d go to South America and tour Inca ruins.” Pausing, she adds, ”I know David would go with me.”
In about five years, Meyer`s daughter, Kelly, will be the same age she was when her mother had the aim-high talk with her. Will she give the same speech to Kelly?
”No. I`m going to tell her she doesn`t have to do anything in the way of a career to please me. She doesn`t have to excel at anything just to please me. If she wants to be a stay-at-home-mom, that`s wonderful as far as I`m concerned.”
