New MCH CEO to arrive in November

SUPERIOR – The Mineral Community Hospital in Superior has been without a permanent CEO for over a year, operating with interim CEO Larry Putnam, while they searched for the right candidate to take over the position.

That search is over. Representatives from MCH released information last week that someone has been hired to replace Putnam and he will start in early November. The new CEO brings to Mineral County not just an awareness of the needs of the hospital, but due to his background, an awareness of the needs of a small, rural community like Mineral County.

Ron Gleason grew up in Ronan in Lake County and has been working in health care for over 30 years. He went to school at the University of Montana and has a background in accounting and hospital administration. Gleason said much of his experience has been working with smaller hospitals.

“Throughout my career in public accounting, I concentrated on working with critical access hospitals,” Gleason said. “Critical access hospital is a designation that the federal government gave to hospitals that are a small facility. You can’t have more than 25 beds. The way the regulations were originally written, you had to be 35 miles away from the nearest facility.”

Gleason said the concept of critical access hospitals was started in Montana and has since gone nationwide. He said while there are many such facilities across the country, the hospital in Superior was one of the first and is a true example of the type of facility the regulations were intended to serve.

“The program was developed out of the Montana Hospital Association,” Gleason said. “It was intended for facilities that are very remote and had small populations surrounding them. It was designed around Montana facilities and later on, a lot of other states wanted to be a part of the program. But Superior was the place it was originally intended for.”

Since the early 1990s, Gleason said over 1300 critical access hospitals have been designated across the country. He said he expects the job to be challenging especially as he applies his financial expertise to a facility that is currently struggling to make ends meet.

“I’m a CPA and I’ve spent a lot of time helping smaller hospitals overcome challenges,” Gleason said. “I’m very hopeful we can be successful in Superior.”

While he could not go into details about what measures he may take to help MCH become more financially solvent, he did mention some of the things that have worked for him in the past when he worked at a hospital in Chester, MT.

“We had to completely reorganize the facility,” Gleason said. “We had a separate nursing home and critical access hospital. We consolidated those. We took a step back and looked at the entire organization. We made some changes in the cost structure. We consolidated down from two nursing stations to one. We did some things to try and improve the efficiency of the operation.”

Gleason said the hospital in Chester was much more financially stable within a year. He said maintaining the hospital in Mineral County was vital to sustaining a healthy community and that the facility does have a lot going for it already.

“There is a very strong management team there,” Gleason said. “I’m very much looking forward to working with that team. There is also a very strong medical staff there. Hopefully we will be able to maintain and enhance those things. I’m really looking forward to moving to Superior. It will be like moving home.”