Recipes for Living Brian Evans

I was born and raised in Des Moines. My parents are Jackie and Bill Evans, who still live in Des Moines. My dad is a retired electrician. He was employed all his life as an electrician, working primarily on commercial projects such as Merle Hay Mall and Adventureland. My mom was a "stay at home" mom until mid-1970, when she opened a Book and Bible Store. She operated that business for 10 or 15 years, and sold it when my dad retired. I have three older sisters; the oldest currently lives in California. The other two are identical twins and both still live in Des Moines.

In my dad's work, he was on the road during the week, and home on weekends. He was a hunter so on those weekends, when I was about 10 years old he introduced me to hunting in Stephen's Forest. Like him, I became a hunter and that has remained a hobby of mine. Years later a friend and I bought a piece of property here in Clarke County to hunt on. I've been coming to the Clarke County area for 35 years. Even though neither my wife nor I grew up in southern Iowa, she shared my appreciation for Clarke County, and one of our long term goals has been to build a retirement home here.

I attended Hoover High School in Des Moines and college at the University of Iowa, followed by post graduate studies at St. Ambrose University, where my major was Business Administration. During the summers, I worked for the same electric company where my dad worked. I did steel work and wiring for substation commercial equipment which would be used in malls.

I met my wife, Kathy, in college, where we both worked in the food service department in the same dormitory. She had grown up on a dairy farm in northeast Iowa, near the town of Worthington. She was one of five children, with four brothers. The first time I met her family, I was obviously nervous. She had a younger brother in seventh grade, and I think he got a kick out of this city boy coming to the country. He asked if I knew anything about farming, and I admitted I didn't. We walked around the farm yard, and he went to the corn crib, pulled out an ear of corn, handed it to me, and said, "This is an ear of corn." That was my first lesson in farming.

Kathy is an elementary school teacher at Holy Trinity in Des Moines. She grew up in the parochial system and always had wanted to work there. We were married in 1982, so we have been married 24 years. We have two children - 17 year old daughter, Rebecca (Becca) and our son Andrew (Drew) is 14. Both of our children attend the parochial school where my wife has taught for 17 years. The kids have been part of the school since they attended pre-school. All the teachers know them and have watched them as they've grown. They went to school with Kathy in the morning and stayed until she came home in the afternoon. That has really attributed to them being very close to Kathy.

I was first employed by Service Master, who provided management services in hospitals, and my first assignment was Assistant Manager of the housekeeping department at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids. I worked for Service Master for about nine years. I left Service Master to manage a clinic in Urbandale. I spent the next 10 years working in doctors' offices and managing the business side of the medical practice.

Immediately before I came to Osceola, I worked for Iowa Health Des Moines in which part of my responsibilities was providing support to rural hospitals that were affiliated with the hospital in Des Moines. I have been on the front lines to watch the transition of rural hospitals from the time their future was questionable, to the stability many of them now enjoy.

When I started working with rural hospitals, I had some relationships with specialist physicians in Des Moines and I tried to use those relationships to see if they could be encouraged to work with rural hospitals. I was involved in bringing clinic administrators and physicians to make introductions, tour the hospital, and see if we could set up practices where they would come and perform services. Clarke County Hospital has done well in adding more specialists to our specialty clinic. The motivation in bringing them here is that people don't need to travel to Des Moines for services that should and can be done locally. Such services would be testing and some surgical procedures.

I came to Clarke County Hospital in February 2005, as the interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and was hired on a permanent basis following the Board of Trustees interview in May. This was an important and exciting move for me because I was already in love with this area. When the job opened up in Osceola, it was in the right place at the right time.

I am well aware of the history of Clarke County Hospital, particularly for the last five years. I know the opportunities and challenges that resulted when the government came up with a new status for hospitals that allowed them to be better reimbursed for the Medicare and Medicaid services they provide. Clarke County went after that designation early in order to be better reimbursed by Medicare/Medicaid funds.

The way the program was set up financially was that the hospital didn't get reimbursed as well as it might as long as it had the Long Term Care Unit. The hospital Board was forced to make a decision regarding what to do about Long Term Care and how to handle it. It was so tough on the patients, their families, and the entire community. I was able to sit in on most of the Board meetings, and related meetings that were going on at that time. It was very difficult for the Board to do what they felt they needed to for the long term survival of the hospital, and at the same time take care of all the individuals in that unit.

Their choice ultimately seemed a good one, putting together a group from the community to confer with the Board. They held a lot of discussions, considered different options, and the final alternative either wasn't available or wasn't realized at the beginning of the process. It allowed the majority of Long Term Care patients to stay, and at the same time the hospital could address the financial issues that were going on. Ultimately I believe we were able to serve the County as a whole by being able to make the changes that were made.

Highly visible to the community was the renovation that took place at the hospital a few years ago. Granted, it was very expensive, and many people surely wondered if we did too much. Actually, what was done in the area of diagnostic services, the operating room, the updating of radiology, lab reports, surgery- all these different areas, opened a door that has allowed us to recruit specialists to come here.

I invite physicians and surgeons in, and when they walk through the operating room, for example, they remark that it is nicer than Des Moines. A further advantage, "I can get in here when I want to get in here," is a common remark of some of the physicians. So what was built here attracts more specialists to the county. In 2005 we almost doubled the number of specialists that came from Des Moines to Osceola. A significant part of that was the facility that attracted them to come to do surgeries, etc. The renovation opened the door to new physicians.

Our plans now are additional renovations on the second floor for in-patients. The east wing was built in early 1950s. The heating and cooling system and the plumbing all need to be updated. Health care has changed so much in these 55 years! The bathrooms are so small that if we need to take a patient in to give assistance, there is not enough room for the patient and the nurse. Most of patients are elderly and we need ample room to take care of them.

For years the significant tax dollars the hospital received from the county has been its lifeline. The last couple years, this year for instance, we are requesting slightly less than had been requested in prior years. From the hospital leadership and the Board's standpoint, we would like to see a decrease to those tax askings. To do that we need to stay alert to what we are doing operationally. The more services we provide, the most efficient we are, the faster we will be able to get to that goal.

Another venture we hope to embark on began with a meeting with the Country Club Board to consider a Clarke County Hospital and Auxiliary Golf Outing for a Scholarship Fund. We would invite the community, the businesses that support or work with the hospital, to participate. That would give us an opportunity to expand our scholarship fund beyond what we have now. It would support individuals interested in getting into the health care field, working at the hospital, or employees who want to expand their careers in different areas from the health care perspective. From a personal standpoint, I worked for a company that provided tuition assistance which allowed me to get my Masters degree while working, and ultimately, I think, it furthered my career from a management perspective. A lot of times individuals can't afford going back to school, so if we could help them by expanding our health care scholarship fund, it would benefit the community, the hospital, and the individuals to expand their careers.

As for personal plans for the future, they center right here in Clarke County. Our long term goal was to build our retirement home in Clarke County. Since I've started working here, we have started building that home and I'm living here now. My wife and kids spend time here, but we go back and forth because of our involvement in the school in Des Moines. Our daughter is a junior at Dowling, and we didn't want to pull her from her high school, where all her friends and activities are, for the sake of my career. When our kids are out of school, Kathy will move down here permanently. I consider myself very fortunate to be part of the Clarke County community. The hospital is a wonderful place to work and our opportunities here are incredible. I enjoy living here and getting to know people in the community.