18
S moke S ignals
march 15, 2014
Lorenz passionate about work
HEALTH SERVICES
continued from front page
and raised $1 million to keep the
hospital afl oat and begin a trans-
formative remodeling process. The
community anteed up another $1
million before the building and pro-
gram renovations were complete.
He evaluated services and made
operational changes to “make things
work better and provide great ser-
vice. I wanted to make sure we were
wowing people,” he said.
The hospital became more ef-
fi cient. The needs of both staff and
patients improved. “If I meet staff
needs,” he said, “then they meet
patient needs.”
In a nutshell, his philosophy is, “I
work for them. I like to be able to tell
patients, ‘Yes, we can do that.’ ”
On an administrative level, ef-
ficiencies followed a number of
actions, including taking back
operation of the pharmacy, negoti-
ating better reimbursements from
insurance companies, opening clin-
ics in areas beyond the hospital’s
usual patient base and improving
the facility’s “fl ow and processes.”
On a patient-centered level, the
hospital did things like sending
dinner home with mothers who had
just given birth at the hospital.
The rejuvenated hospital began
building a reputation as a place
with a family atmosphere.
The process took time. In 1990,
when he arrived, 14 physicians
worked in the hospital. None of
them were specialists and none
were female. In-patient rooms were
four- and fi ve-bed wards with com-
mon bathrooms in the hall. Many
halls led to dead ends. The local fi re
marshal frequently reported the
need for safety improvements.
At that time, hospital births were
about 40 a month, emergency visits
were 60 to 80, and surgeries were
in the low 30s.
Five years later, after the first
phase of an extensive remodel, all the
patient rooms held two at most “and
we tried hard to keep them private as
much as possible,” Lorenz said. Bath
facilities were brought into rooms.
A new patient care section emerged
with a central nursing center.
By 1998, the second phase had
turned the old patient areas into
management offices and surgery
suites. The remodel, along with
satellite facilities that brought
in patients from the surrounding
area, resulted in a hospital doing
160 births a month, 2,000 emer-
gency visits and 200 surgeries.
“We were hopping,” Lorenz said.
By then, half of the 80 medical
providers were women.
Throughout his career, Lorenz
has been passionate about his
work. While still in high school, he
started with a summer work/study
volunteer job transporting patients
to the local hospital in his home-
town of Wallingford, Pa., on the
outskirts of Philadelphia.
A friend’s father who was a physi-
cian asked him if he would like to
learn to draw blood.
“I got pretty profi cient at it,” he
said. “I was really interested in sci-
ence, and they taught me to operate
the machine that analyzes blood.”
At that time, he wanted to be a phy-
sician, but later learned that he had a
better instinct for administrative and
management work, and he turned his
education in that direction.
Throughout his career, starting
all the way back in high school,
Lorenz has made every effort to
broaden his knowledge, taking
on new working experiences and
staying until he learned everything
about the job, and much about the
jobs he supervised.
While at Tuality Community, he
took on staff responsibility as direc-
tor of Administrative Services, and
at the same time he was picking
up line management experience
as manager of two immediate care
centers. For a couple of years, he
added to those a position as director
of Home Health Services.
There is one exception, however,
to this record of success. Though
he plays golf every week, he said,
“I can’t seem to put two good nines
together.”
Lorenz lives in northeast Salem
with his wife and two daughters.
The couple’s oldest child, a son,
has opened his own business in
Beaverton.
He succeeds Mark Johnston, the
Tribe’s general manager, in the
position. n
Share Your Home
Share Your Heart
PROVIDE RESPITE CARE
Want to help a Tribal child but unable to foster
full-time? Become a respite care provider!
•
•
•
•
Provide care on a short term/emergency basis
Receive specialized pre-service training
Competitive respite care support payments
1-on-1 support for respite care providers
FIND US ON
Children & Family Services
is a Proud Part of:
Facebook!
For more information contact:
800.242.8196 or 503.879.2039
Email: amanda.mercier@grandronde.org
CTGR Children
& Family Services
www.grandronde.org