Troubled Las Vegas hospital names interim CEO

Aug. 13—There's a new hand at the wheel of Alta Vista Regional Hospital — for now, at least.

Amanda Shurtz, a longtime health care executive with a nursing background, took over as interim CEO of the troubled Las Vegas, N.M., hospital July 30, eight months after it changed hands late last year.

Shurtz, who replaces interim CEO Rob Nelson, is also corporate director of operations for Java Medical Group, the hospital's management company. She has no plans to take the CEO job long term, but said Java will let her stay in the interim position as long as needed to find a permanent replacement.

"I'm very committed to giving everything I have ... to this rural community that needs its hospital so desperately," Shurtz, who has worked alongside Nelson for the last several months as he prepared for his departure, said in an interview.

Shurtz said her priorities in the next months include hands-on participation in the CEO search, boosting recruitment and phasing out the use of "travelers" — temporary medical staff employed by third-party companies, typically at a much higher cost.

Ultimately, she said, the goal is to make Alta Vista financially steady.

"Java's commitment in any community that we are in is to help the hospital be self-sustainable, so that community or the surrounding communities never have to worry about it going away again," she said. "If somebody from a corporate entity is sending millions of dollars in every year, then it's probably not sustainable."

Alta Vista has been in a period of tumult for the last few years, as have many other hospitals in rural communities around the state fighting headwinds of skyrocketing labor and supply costs and competing over staff.

The hospital shuttered its labor and delivery unit in 2022, citing struggles to hire and retain providers. Alta Vista leaders closed its intensive care unit last year, acknowledging at the time there weren't enough patients to sustain the service.

Tennessee-based Quorum Health, which owned the hospital until late last year, was hit in late 2022 by a lawsuit from then-state Attorney General Hector Balderas, who reamed the facility for alleged substandard conditions and for advertising service the hospital could no longer provide, according to earlier reports.

Quorum and The Attorney General's Office settled that lawsuit in September, with the company agreeing to pay $400,000 for restitution and other funds. The company did not admit any liability or wrongdoing as part of the agreement. The hospital passed a follow-up inspection by the state Department of Health in February 2023, according to the New Mexico Health Care Authority.

In November, the hospital announced Quorum was selling the facility to Dava Health Inc., another Tennessee-based company, according to a news release at the time. Shurtz said the company owns four hospitals, all managed by Java.

That same month, the hospital also announced it had attained the federal "Critical Access Hospital" designation, which offers qualifying hospitals serving rural areas some federal financial benefits.

Shurtz said she believes the 25-bed hospital is on a good path, but there is lots of work left to do and the financial pressures aren't easing up.

"I will tell you that things every month are looking up financially for Alta Vista," she said. "But that comes at the cost of having to look under every rock and being very diligent to do what we can with the funds we have. ... You have to watch every dollar, every penny."

Shurtz said hospital leaders have been hard at work on recruitment, and credited chief nursing officer Leah Joslin for cultivating a relationship with the nursing program at Luna Community College that's led to several recent hires from new graduates. The hospital is also working with a recruiting organization that's helped the facility fill a few particularly hard-to-find staff jobs, she said.

Those efforts are showing results, Shurtz said.

"It is our plan not to have any traveler nurses here after Sept. 30, and we're well on our way for that plan," she said.

Shurtz said her team is meeting regularly with hospitals Alta Vista transfers to, such as Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, Presbyterian and University of New Mexico Hospital, to find "ways that we can keep care close to home."

Yolanda Ulmer, CEO of Union District 1199NM, which represents hospital employees except administrators and security staff, told The New Mexican union leaders met with leaders from Dava and Java shortly after the sale, a conversation that focused in part on the need for replacing outdated equipment.

More recently, she said they held another meeting to discuss concerns about employee morale.

The hospital and the union, which are due to go into contract negotiations next year, have also forged several agreements to bring up pay due to inflation, Ulmer said.

"The union does have some concern about equipment and morale, but are willing to work [these] issues out," she wrote.

Shurtz acknowledged some changes have been tough for staff.

"During a transition from one hospital ownership to another, there are going to be changes," she said. "It's been difficult for some of our staff members to navigate through those changes."

Shurtz said she's planning to start weekly meetings as often as possible with the union, and she's taking several steps to try to start shaping the hospital's culture. Those include boosting communication by sending out a weekly email, asking leaders to meet regularly to fill the staff in on what's going on and starting an employee engagement committee to plan activities like community service days or "fun at the hospital" events.

"There isn't any one magical thing that makes a culture good," Shurtz said. "It takes day-in, day-out work from everybody."

For community members who rely on the hospital for health care or jobs, there's been a "sense of concern" in the last couple of years, Las Vegas Mayor David Romero said Monday.

Romero said he was disappointed at Nelson's departure, since he saw Nelson as being more involved and accessible than his predecessor. But Romero said he has met with Shurtz, and found her receptive when he expressed residents' desire for the hospital to be more transparent about the decisions it is making and the reasons behind them.

"She's agreed to ... start communicating to the public via radio and other methods to give the community a sense of comfort and better understanding," Romero said, adding Shurtz also committed to meeting with elected officials.

Shurtz said Monday hospital leaders plan to bring some community members into the permanent CEO search, including having community volunteers participate in interviews along with hospital staff, hospital leaders and board members. The goal is to hire someone who already lives in the area or who wants to move there, she said.

"We're going to be pretty transparent with the way we're going to conduct our CEO search," Shurtz said. "We plan to do this carefully and thoroughly so that we find the right fit."