Photography courtesy St. Luke's
Andrew Bagnall can’t stop moving.
Each day, the St. Luke’s Hospital president and CEO walks the halls of the institution to check in with different departments. Bagnall calls these walks his “daily rounds,” during which he sees for himself the work being done and the challenges people face. Some days, his rounds might take him to the maternity ward to visit with nurses. Other times, his rounds might lead him to the physician’s lounge for lunch.
Bagnall, who joined St. Luke’s in August after serving in a similar role at Hospital Sisters Health System in Wisconsin, has been making these daily visits throughout his nearly two decades as a health care executive. For him, it’s crucial that a hospital has a thriving workforce culture—especially these days, as the industry battles burnout after years of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving around the hospital every day allows him to see that culture at work.
“I’m a firm believer that everyone makes a difference in this organization,” Bagnall says. “I want to hear from the people that are on the frontlines so that I understand how we can continue to improve as we go forward. For me, engaging all the people that work here to make it a better place to care for patients—that's what it’s all about.”
Bagnall recently sat down with St. Louis Magazine to talk about his new role at St. Luke’s, the state of the industry, and his hospital’s growth opportunities moving forward.
What has your transition to St. Louis been like? It’s been awesome. My wife and I are newly empty nesters. We have three children—two who are attending college and one who is out of college. The welcoming that we’ve received from the community has been phenomenal. I’ve been in the Midwest my whole adult life, and St. Louis is a regional draw. We love sports and having access to the arts. Once we got here and met all of the community members, it just felt like home.
What was it about the opportunity at St. Luke’s that made this position attractive to you? There were several things. First, St. Luke’s has a very, very long standing history and tradition of providing exceptional quality to the communities that we serve. It goes without saying that the accolades that St. Luke’s has received over the years, whether through Healthgrades, U.S. News & World Report, and any others, and the reputation of the care that’s provided here speaks for itself. Second, it’s a smaller, independent system in which I felt like I could make a meaningful difference. I’ve been in health care for 25-plus years in various roles, and this was a great next step in my career because it feels like a place where I can partner with the medical staff, physicians, and employees that we have to carry on the legacy of providing exceptional care. The health care industry is going through a lot of disruption. I felt like I could make a meaningful impact in navigating some of the challenges that the industry faces, and the types of challenges St. Luke’s faces that are associated with that.
Now that you have had some time to familiarize yourself with the way things work here, what are some of those challenges? We’re moving toward a post-pandemic environment. Labor costs have increased due to inflationary pressures. Our supplies costs and the cost of doing business have gone up quite a bit, but that’s not unlike a lot of other businesses in other industries. We’re reshaping and designing how we are going to be effective and efficient moving forward. That’s exciting to me. We have a lot of passionate people that care very deeply about the institution itself, and I’m coming into a team that’s excited to tackle some of the challenges we’re facing across the industry, and come up with new ways of how we might structure our work going forward. The other thing I’m excited about is all of the new opportunities that this market presents. I think there’s a lot of growth opportunities for us that we want to capitalize on going forward.
Can you give an example of what those opportunities might be? We need to continue to grow, and there are parts of this region that we believe that we can expand services to in order to bring care closer to people’s homes. We’re exploring opportunities to do that. We certainly want to continue to leverage our relationship with the Cleveland Clinic and our cardiovascular center to continue to grow that service line, as well as other service lines that we are performing highly in.
Staffing is another issue that health care providers of all sizes are navigating across the industry. Where is St. Luke’s with regard to staffing? Most hospitals and health care systems across the country have certainly had and continue to have their challenges. We’ve had a lot of people retire, or go into other industries, or take other positions during the past few years. We’re not immune to the pressures of staffing, just like other large systems and other systems in our region. We continue to recruit in many of our clinical areas. One of the things I was impressed by when I first got here was that we don’t have a high number of contracts and labor resources in our hospitals. That’s impressive to me, because it means that—for the most part—we’ve been able to manage pretty well through some of the strains and pressures that we’ve all faced. But we do have a lot of positions open. We are still recruiting in many clinical areas—mostly in nursing or specialty nursing areas. At the same time, other systems are facing similar sorts of challenges. So I feel like we’re doing pretty well in terms of our ability to manage through it.
What do you think the health care industry has learned about itself since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? There have been a lot of lessons. I think, most importantly, we learned that all of the systems are here for the same reasons. Even though we may have different missions and work within different corporate structures, at the end of the day we’re all here to take care of the community. Look at St. Louis. Organizations here really banded together to partner and take care of the community during the pandemic. It showed that the community can really trust the health care system in general to respond positively for the betterment of everyone. So that’s certainly No. 1.
What else? We know that we need to take care of the people that work for us. As an organization, we know that the people who take care of our patients are our most important assets and resources. Four years ago, you probably would’ve gotten a similar answer. It’s not that we never thought that to begin with. But I do believe that a little bit of a different lens was put on some of the challenges that we faced the last two or three years. The people who work for us matter. We have to keep our people well and healthy, and we have to help them work through the daily challenges that they face every single day. We have to take great care of our people.
What kind of imprint do you want to leave on the institution? I’m a firm believer that when you leave an organization, you need to leave it better than when you came in. That can mean a lot of different things. The health care industry is going through a lot of challenges. Part of my job is helping us get to the other side. Another part is helping St. Luke’s continue to build and grow. I’m passionate and excited about that.
