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New Forum boss expects to lead team to victory
Forum Health CEO
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Walter Pishkur
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Forum Health Northside Medical Center
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Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital
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Regional Chamber President Thomas Humphries
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — The ball is in Buzz Pishkur’s hands.
Walter J. “Buzz” Pishkur, longtime basketball official and head of Aqua Ohio, is the new president and chief executive officer of financially struggling Forum Health.
Buzz, as he is known to friends, acquaintances, employers and employees, doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously.
For example, he was willing to be photographed holding a basketball in front of Northside Medical Center, part of the Forum health-care system he has been hired to lead and revive.
If it will help bring attention to the things by which Forum should be identified, such as the positive clinical outcomes, or celebrating last week the birth of the 1,000th baby this year at Northside, instead of just its financial woes, “I’ll do it,” he said with a smile.
However, Pishkur said he is very serious about his leadership role at Forum, and optimistic about Forum Health’s future, despite the many challenges, financial and otherwise, that it faces.
His appointment to Forum’s top job is so new — he was hired by the Forum Board of Trustees on Sept. 11 — that he has not officially taken office. That is expected next week.
But already he is developing a plan to carry forward his and the board’s vision for Forum.
Drawing on his baseball and basketball playing days, he said success at Forum will require a team effort. He said he is prepared to lead Forum with the same level of passion and energy that enabled him to rise through the ranks of the water business to become head of Aqua Ohio and Aqua Pennsylvania Shenango Division.
“[Forum] is absolutely critical to the communities it serves. My vision for Forum Health’s future can be simply stated: I want to make Forum Health and its facilities places where patients will want to receive care, physicians will want to practice, and health professionals and support staff want to work,” Pishkur said.
“I firmly believe that Forum Health, and the choices in health care and the jobs it brings to our community, are very important. I think it’s appropriate that a local person use his skills to try and assure Forum’s long-term existence,” he said of his hiring.
Pishkur grew up in Hubbard and worked in that city’s water department for 10 years. Since then, he has worked and lived in a number of cities in Ohio as well as in Danville, Ill., following his work. He now lives in Boardman with his wife, Joyce, also a Hubbard native.
No one interviewed for this story questioned Pishkur’s success and skill in the water business, or his enthusiasm and passion.
Some wondered, however, if his business skills, honed in the water business, will transfer to the complex and specialized health-care business.
Pishkur’s only real experience in the business end of health care has been to serve three years on the Forum Board of Trustees, including four months as chairman.
Whether he is qualified for the Forum job is a question he took head-on in a wide-ranging interview, in which he talked about himself, his vision for Forum and his life and management philosophies.
“I will have to move up the learning curve in a hurry,” Pishkur acknowledged.
What he thinks will enable him to successfully lead Forum is being a local person, and having working relationships with local elected officials, bankers and doctors during his career in the water business and on the Forum board.
When asked why he thinks the Forum board hired him, he pointed to his long-term and multifaceted community involvement, which includes being chairman of the 2008 Youngstown-Mahoning County United Way campaign and having served on the Regional Chamber’s executive and financial committees.
Also, he said, “I would like to think that the board respected my thinking process and the way I conducted myself” as a board member, and that “I was a good match to the set of skills” developed in the process of looking for a new CEO.
He said he moved from Aqua to Forum seeking new challenges, a multitude of which, community leaders agree, Forum and all the hospitals in the Mahoning Valley share: a declining and aging population, declining jobs and increased number of under-insured and uninsured, and the need for capital to invest in infrastructure and new technology.
On top of those, Forum is facing continuing financial problems, including scrutiny and oversight by lenders, significant debt, and operating losses at Northside Medical Center, one of the three major facilities left in Forum Health. The others are Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland.
Other pieces, such as Beeghly Medical Park in Boardman, have been sold, or like Tod Children’s Hospital, closed.
Though those actions were taken by the Forum Board of Trustees while Pishkur was a member, he said he is “not an expert in closing. My motivation is to find a way to give Forum Health a long-term positive outcome.”
Pishkur’s lack of experience in the health industry will also be offset by his management philosophy, which is to “manage the process and lead people,” said Regional Chamber President Thomas Humphries.
Pishkur, whom Humphries called a “confidant,” served on the chamber’s two most important committees: finance, of which he was chairman, and the executive committee.
Pishkur said his business philosophy is to hire and retain competent people, engage them in the goals of the organization, and then give them the resources and the room for responsibility and authority to implement the goals “we’ve agreed upon.”
He said Forum’s goals are spelled out in the board’s vision statement, which he helped craft.
All are important, but some have priority, he said.
He said he is already working to try and change people’s perception of Forum Health from a financially strapped health care organization to one which has a high level of positive clinical outcomes. In part, he plans to do that by being more open to the media and the public.
Finances are critical, but it is important for people to know that Forum Health has never missed a payment on its debt; that it has reduced that debt from $180 million plus 10 years ago to $146 million now, minus about $51 million deposited in the debt service reserve fund that counts against the $146 million.
To achieve what he wants, Pishkur said another top priority is to renegotiate the debt to make the payments more manageable and to free up money to invest in infrastructure and new technology and physician recruitment and retention.
“We’re going to sit down and evaluate what our capital needs are and prioritize. I’ll know the answer to that in 60 to 90 days,” he said.
Also on his to-do list is to heal the internal rift between TMH/Hillside in Trumbull County and Northside in Mahoning County, that Humphries said has widened because of Forum’s financial crisis of the last few years.
It has gotten to a point where a citizens committee in Trumbull County, which feels Northside is financially dragging down TMH and Hillside, is investigating dissolving the merger between TMH and the former Western Reserve Health System (Northside).
Though the board’s vision statement includes being open to the possible need to dissolve the Forum Health system and allow each hospital to be a free-standing community hospital, Pishkur said he doesn’t believe that since the merger in 1997 there has ever been a major effort to bring the two entities together.
‘“I believe we can create value of association without losing individual identity. If we get to the right kind of interaction, we’ll all see the value,” he said.
Pishkur said he will quickly get to know Forum Health and its people.
“I’m accessible. I answer the phone. I not only get out in the public, I get out and about in the company,” he said.
Finally, Pishkur defended the board of trustees from which he resigned to become Forum’s new leader.
The last three years on the board have been very challenging, requiring an extraordinary amount of time and effort and tough decision making,” he said.
“I think the community should applaud the commitment and effort and decisions,” which he said were “right on point.”
Now, he said his intention is to make Forum a financially viable on-going concern and start growing the business through partnerships and acquisitions.
“My goal is to plot a plan to give Forum a long-term future,” Pishkur said.
alcorn@vindy.com