Firelands CEO discusses hospital's strengths and challenges

SANDUSKY — Firelands Regional Medical Center's new CEO, Jeremy Normington-Slay, said he's committed to building good relationships with local health care providers and with other area hospitals.Normington-Slay, whose hire was announced in September, also spoke candidly about what he worries about as the hospital's top official.Normington-Slay and two other important local business leaders — Civista Bank CEO Dennis Shaffer and Cedar Fair CEO Richard Zimmerman — participated in a public roundtable event held Wednesday morning at Sandusky State Theatre.The event was recorded and is available for demand viewing at sanduskyregister.com and the Register's YouTube page. The Register co-sponsored the roundtable, and the paper's publisher, Ron Waite, served as moderator.Firelands Regional Medical Center is Erie County's largest year-round employer, with 2,511 employees. Normington-Slay said Firelands officials can tell local customers the hospital is "big enough to care for you, small enough to care about you."The product of the merger of three smaller hospitals, Firelands offers many services that prevent potential patients from having to go elsewhere, he said, but it also has a personal touch. It's likely a patient will see his nurse at the grocery store, or his doctor at the hardware store, Normington-Slay said.Normington-Slay came to Sandusky after working as a hospital administrator in Wisconsin. He said he was attracted to come to Sandusky because he and his wife wanted to raise their five children in a smaller community. He said he knew about Sandusky from working in the Wisconsin Dells, which also has a Kalahari waterpark.He told the crowd of about 100 that when he was recruited to interview for the Firelands CEO job, he was told about the hospital's size and assumed it was in the suburb of a big city.He told the recruiter, "Unless it's Sandusky, Ohio, I'm not really interested.""It was Sandusky, Ohio," Normington-Slay said.The hospital CEO said he has two challenges to focus on.One is to control costs and to operate efficiently. The hospital has to compete with health care organizations that don't have fixed costs such as having to run a 24-7 emergency room, he said.The other is to make sure the hospital has a good relationship with other local health care providers, he said."There's no question there were some community relationships that were strained that we need to do better at," Normington-Slay said.He said when he arrived, Firelands already had top rankings for patient satisfaction and quality services. That allows the hospital to have a loyal customer base, he said.When Waite asked what Normington-Slay worries about, the hospital chief said bad outcomes with patients are always a concern, even if some can't be avoided."We're in health care. Patients pass away in our hospital through no one's fault," he said.Still, there are times when the hospital has to try to figure out what it could have done better, he said.Normington-Slay also wonders what would happen if Fisher-Titus, Bellevue or Magruder hospitals or NOMS were sold to a larger health care system."That would really change the dynamic," he said.Jeremy Normington-Slay of Firelands Regional Medical Center talks about his time with the hospital so far during a discussion at the Sandusky State Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019.Three corporate leaders Dennis Shaffer of Civista Bank, Jeremy Normington-Slay of Firelands Regional Medical Center and Richard Zimmerman of Cedar Fair laugh while talking about their favorite ride at Cedar Point during a discussion at the Sandusky State Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019.Jeremy Normington-Slay, president and CEO of Firelands Regional Medical Center, laughs while telling a story about a previous trip to Sandusky during an interview at the hospital on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018.