June 19, 2023

You can say the stars aligned.

Or you can say as new Avera McKennan CEO Dr. Ron Place did: “God had a plan.”

“It worked out for me, and the hope is it will work out for Avera and Avera McKennan,” he said. “That this is a good start of a great relationship where I will bring value to an already value-centric organization.”

Faced with mandatory retirement from the U.S. military, the three-star Army general wasn’t ready to retire professionally and was looking for what’s next.

“I happen to be Catholic, so if it could align with my faith, that would be fantastic,” he said.

And there’s his family. Originally from Huron, Place’s parents still live there. His wife, Carol, has family in Yankton. Their oldest son’s family, which includes four grandchildren, lives in Harrisburg.

Still, at first, it didn’t seem like a leadership role at Avera was in the cards.

His sister-in-law is an Avera employee as is one of his cousins. They  encouraged him to look into the CEO role at Avera McKennan when it was posted last summer. He started the process, then was asked to extend his role with the Department of Defense, where he led a $53 billion operation and played a key role in merging three health service organizations under one umbrella for the U.S. government.

He retired as the director of the Defense Health Agency in Washington, providing executive leadership on organizational, operational and policy matters pertaining to worldwide Department of Defense medical programs for 9.6 million patients, including 140,000 staff in 45 hospitals and over 650 medical and dental clinics.

But as for the top job at Avera McKennan, “I thought the opportunity had passed,” he said.

Then, last fall, while invited to speak at the school where his son teaches in Harrisburg, he asked to meet with Avera leadership.

“If they’d already hired somebody, that’s great, but I want to come back here if I can work it out,” he said.

As it turned out, Avera had delayed hiring for the job.

“It actually fit perfectly with the window of my retirement,” Place said.

His resume returned to the applicant pool, and he ultimately began in the new role this May.

“Clearly, his credentials, but his personality” stood out, said Dave Flicek, who previously held the CEO role at Avera McKennan and now is chief operating officer of Avera Health. “You could see the South Dakota in him.”

Career journey

Growing up in Huron, Place was one of three aspiring physicians in his family. His father worked for the area Social Security office, and his mother was a stay-at-home mom.

“We all wanted to go to medical school. That’s not going to happen on a mid-level federal employee salary,” he said. “The best scholarships were military scholarships.”

A military scholarship led him to the University of South Dakota and a degree in chemistry, then his medical doctorate degree from Creighton University in Omaha. He also holds a master’s degree in national security strategy with a health policy concentration from the National Defense University in Washington.

In his medical training, Place completed a general surgery residency at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, as well as a colon and rectal surgery fellowship at the University of Texas – Southwestern in Dallas. He has served as a chief surgeon, deputy commander and commander at multiple Army medical centers.

When it comes to his military service, “the reason and I joined and the reason I stayed are different,” he said.

In 2001, weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, he was deployed as part of the medical team supporting the U.S. Special Forces in the war on terror. It opened his eye to the true mission of the U.S. military, he said.

“There’s no such thing as indiscriminate killing,” he said. “These are people out on horses trying to figure out how we can solve problems with as little violence as possible. It’s violence as a last resort. They would put themselves at incredible risk to do that.”

As a surgeon taking care of soldiers, “it became my life’s mission,” he said. “What can I do to provide the greatest quality of care to men and women who are so incredible.”

It all sits “on the foundation of the mission,” he continued, beginning to draw the parallel with what most attracted him to the role at Avera McKennan.

“I’m here because of the mission,” he said. “The people here live it. When you walk around and talk to people, it isn’t a one-off. The culture of Avera is to deliver on its mission: to improve the lives and health of people and communities.”

Balancing culture, innovation

As the top executive in the Avera McKennan region, Place will provide senior leadership for all aspects of care delivery within the region. That includes Avera McKennan, the health system’s 545-bed flagship tertiary hospital in Sioux Falls, as well as Avera McKennan sites such as the Avera on Louise Health Campus, Avera Behavioral Health Hospital, Avera Human Performance Center, sports and fitness facilities, Avera Prince of Peace Retirement Community, Avera Research Institute and more.

He also will serve as a member of the Avera senior leadership team and provide guidance on designated service lines to support the overall delivery model for the system.

Weeks into the job, he sees parallels in how the system is structured and what he’s used to overseeing in the military health system.

“It’s the marrying of the importance of primary care where people are, to specialty care where it needs to be consolidated and through traveling programs, outreach, virtual health, making it all work together,” Place said.

He regularly has made rounds and visited some rural locations already.

“The center of gravity for us is people taking care of people,” he said. “For me to lead them, I have to be with them.”

If there have been any surprises, it has been in “the depth and breadth and warmth and hospitality of every single person who is here,” he said.

It’s one thing to put on a good impression for an interview candidate, he explained. This has gone beyond that.

“It’s truly a warm, welcoming, gracious, compassionate, wonderfully organized group of people who just care about helping others,” he said. “So I was surprised by the depth and breadth of the culture. And if you look at the benchmark measures of quality, it’s not just about how this is a Catholic organization and we’re going to be compassionate. The quality of care here … is exceptional.”

He comes in to lead an organization that has come through the pandemic, a tornado and other severe storms and the economic challenges of the past few years. It’s also seemingly in a better place today. As Avera’s fiscal year winds down this month, “we should end with a slight margin, when 70 or 80 percent of hospitals are losing money,” Flicek said.

At a low, there were 0.6 applicants for every one nursing position. There now are three per opening. In a recent employee survey, 82 percent of Avera employees reported they felt engaged in their jobs, he said.

 

“That’s the top 10 percent” within the health care field, Flicek said, adding one priority for Place will be responding to some employees’ concerns about safety at work.

Bigger picture, “this organization has been mindful about specialties of care,” Place said. “The coherent growth strategy — not growth for growth’s sake but growth to support the needs of the community — is fantastic. My priority is to think through what are the next steps for that and what are the areas we should be concentrating on.”

Both he and Flicek speak from the same perspective in talking about the system’s growth strategy.

“We’ve seen health systems get big to get big,” Flicek said. “Our growth is contiguous to our markets. We have no ambitions to go three states over. We’re going to stay contiguous to our marketplace. We think it’s doable and manageable. The town grows. Birth rates go up. Everything goes high. We feel bullish in the Sioux Falls region, and we feel bullish for all of Avera moving forward.”

For Place, whose free time finds him long-distance biking or running, reading historical and military fiction or — more likely — spending time with his grandchildren, the Sioux Falls area has shown a pronounced change from what he remembers decades ago.

“Sioux Falls is past the tipping point,” he said. “The Sioux Falls of 20 years ago was a big town that had more stuff than other towns. Sioux Falls is an integrated city, and hats off to the city government and business leaders and nonprofits and the integration with the state government and elected federal representatives. Hats off to all who were part of that process. Coming back here, it’s a different place.”