Coming from the Big Apple to Blues City was less of a culture shock than one might imagine for Kevin Hammeran, the new CEO and administrator of Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women and the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children’s Hospital.

While his previous years as senior VP and COO at New York-Presbyterian Hospital — and CAO of its Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and the Sloane Hospital for Women — were productive and fulfilling, Hammeran looks forward to the comfortable, community lifestyle Memphis offers, which he compares to his early years in Cincinnati and Indianapolis — a “back porch community where you can barbecue with your neighbors, and your kids grow up with other families around you.”

Professionally, he happily anticipates embracing his new responsibilities at Baptist: As one of the original members of the Council of Women’s and Infants’ Specialty Hospitals (CWISH), Baptist is highly regarded as one of the nation’s premier women’s hospitals, he points out, while its new Children’s Hospital, opened in January 2015, is “a magnificent gift from Spence and Becky Wilson. We need to treasure and honor that legacy.”

Building recognition and trust in that facility and its assets is one of his priorities. “We want the pediatricians to feel the child they refer to us is safe in our hands, that we can deal with any emergency, and we’re prepared to do justice to what they ask us to do,” he said. 

Hammeran considers it simply good stewardship.

He is similarly committed to ensuring that Baptist’s women’s hospital continues to shine: “I have an absolute duty to protect and cherish the capabilities and the strengths we have here in Women’s and continue to grow that legacy.” He points to a strong maternity program as well as leadership in gynecologic oncology and reproductive endocrinology.

“We have a world-class program and some terrific opportunities here,” he said.

Hammeran is grateful for the "unheard of" opportunity to have three weeks of orientation with his predecessor, the revered Anita Vaughn, a 43-year veteran of the Baptist system who continues to serve as part-time consultant with the Baptist Memorial Health Care Foundation.

“I’m very comfortable with what I have inherited from Anita; she hired great people and conveyed to this organization great values, and those are embedded in the culture here.”

Himself a dedicated proponent of strong values, Hammeran worked his way through school and simultaneously rose through the ranks careerwise, from hospital orderly to orthopedic assistant to department head to assistant administrator during his undergraduate years at the University of Cincinnati, and while earning his master’s degree in hospital administration through part-time studies at Xavier University.

An early job as administrator at the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania — “the Mayo Clinic of the East,” he said — offered him the choice of administering specialty surgery or the women’s and children’s program. Hammeran chose the women’s/pediatric side — a life-changing decision.

“I had one of the best experiences of my life,” he recalls, in a program that prospered, leading him to leadership roles at Children’s Hospital in Boston, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Miami Children’s Hospital, and the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, as well as New York Presbyterian.

“I can truly say,” he said, “that there is enormous strategic value in having both a women’s hospital and a children’s hospital together. The infants in so many of the children’s hospitals’ neonatal units are outborn in a community hospital and brought in by ambulance. It’s much easier if we can bring the woman in, deliver her safely here, and the baby is just down the hall in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). You don’t have that frantic multiple-hour transport in; so the baby arrives healthier and you’re better prepared to get them straight into the NICU. Here at Baptist we’re ideally positioned for that.

“Forty years ago, much of our healthcare policy was driven around ‘attacks on illness.’ We were finding cures for polio, ways to treat heart disease — the clinical magic bullet. Ironically, we were not investing in immunization and prevention activities.

“You would have a lot more healthy babies if moms get good prenatal healthcare. Data tells us that prevention matters and treatment matters. We’re trying to strike that balance as a country; we may disagree about how to do it, but at the end of the day, we all want a healthier population.

“We work in a world that doesn’t have unlimited resources. We’re bound by the very fact that the nation is spending a lot on its healthcare. It’s telling us bluntly that it isn’t just about money, it’s about value. Patients are spending a lot of money with us. We have a duty to give them good value . . . the best we can do.

"It’s not about a building or a program; I’d like to believe that every place I’ve been, I’ve left it a little better than I found it. I truly believe that’s our mission in life — to be good stewards.”

His experience has given him several insights:

• “One of the things I’ve learned: I can teach anybody skills. The thing you can’t teach is values. The first and last thing I put my time and energy into is picking people who have strong values. I’d rather not have to ask the right question to get a full answer. "
• “When you make a deal, you should live up to it. It’s important that we keep our word. Maybe that comes back to the stewardship piece: At the end of the day, it’s still about trying to do the right thing."

“Hammeran and his wife, Karen, a former health information technologist, have been married for more than 30 years and have two grown children who he considers his greatest accomplishment: a son who is an attorney in the New York Superior Court and a daughter who is a recreational therapist.

RELATED LINKS:

Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women

Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children's Hospital

Council of Women's and Infants' Specialty Hospitals