New Ceo Resuscitating Eastern State Hospital C. Jan Gregg Comes To State From Cincinnati, Where She Helped Revive Its Hospital

The new superintendent at Eastern State Hospital hasn’t quite settled into her office.

Enough chairs for a baseball team are crammed on one side of the sprawling room. An outdated accreditation certificate hangs on the wood-paneled wall.

C. Jan Gregg, who started as chief executive officer at the troubled Medical Lake center Jan. 27, is too busy for trivial things. The only personal touch in her office is flowers on her desk, sent by her husband for her 55th birthday.

“She hit the ground running and hasn’t had a minute,” said Harold Wilson, Eastern’s chief operating officer, as he popped into Gregg’s office. “Everyone wants some of her time.”

Gregg is used to tough challenges. Before moving to Washington, she helped turn around a struggling mental hospital in Ohio. Now she’s working on resuscitating Eastern, which last year almost lost federal funding.

Gregg said she wants to be a good leader and show she cares, not just with words but with actions. She wants to listen to staff recommendations.

“In other hospitals I’ve worked, I knew my patients by name,” said Gregg in a velvet accent from Turkey, where she was born. “I knew the families. I’m no saint, but I do like to relate to people and work with them. That’s why I’m in this business. They don’t have anyone else but us.”

Eastern faced serious trouble last year, almost losing its federal funding after a team of investigators found problems with care and staffing.

Patient participation in therapy groups was down. Nurses weren’t following up on patients’ symptoms. Patient charts didn’t have weekly progress reports.

The Health Care Financing Administration warned that if the hospital didn’t correct its nursing shortages and other problem areas, it could lose two-thirds of its funding.

That move could’ve closed the 302-bed hospital, which now houses 285 patients. The hospital tackled its problems. A surprise inspection in October gave Eastern a perfect score.

Gregg said Eastern’s past didn’t worry her.

“To be honest, I did not look at that at all,” she said. “I didn’t look at that as an issue.”

Gregg also faced a tough job at the Pauline Warfield Lewis Center in Cincinnati, Ohio’s largest mental health center. She was hired as the center’s assistant chief executive officer in 1993.

Two years later, she was named acting CEO after the top administrator quit. Patients were leaving hospital grounds without permission. Morale was bad. The hospital’s relationship with the community was shaky.

Months after Gregg’s temporary appointment, center medical staff unanimously adopted a resolution asking the Ohio Department of Health to name her to the top spot.

“And it’s just very rare for a medical staff to be unanimous about anything,” said Dr. Daniel Wilson, medical director of the Lewis Center. “People were disappointed when she left. She was regarded as a very solid and deliberate leader.”

When Gregg started as the center’s CEO, it averaged 30 unauthorized patient leaves a month. There was only one a month when she left.

A permanent replacement hasn’t yet been named.

“She was always very interested in the families and loved the patients,” said Alice Gray, the Ohio center’s director of support services. “Her approach was, they’re the most important reason we’re here.”

At Eastern, Gregg replaces interim director Pat Terry, former administrator of Western State Hospital. Many staff members credit Terry with helping Eastern work on its problems.

Terry filled in for Steven Covington, who quit in late July. He was under fire for ethics violations, including misusing state telephones and vehicles, and swinging a sweetheart deal on a large house on hospital grounds.

Covington paid $91.08 a month to rent the home, which would rent for about $950 a month on the open market, according to a state auditor’s report.

Gregg is paying $750 a month to rent the same house. But she plans to buy a new house with her husband, once he moves to Spokane.

Staff members have told her they want a CEO with a long-term commitment to Eastern, a good relationship with the community and a cohesive staff. She told them that she wants to work with them, not against them.

“I love it,” said Dr. Bill Sherman, the medical director for Eastern. “She’s open. She’s experienced. She’s firm when she needs to be, and she understands hospitals. There’s been a huge improvement from a year ago.”

Gregg has started touring the hospital on different shifts. She’s meeting with different departments to share her philosophy of providing good psychiatric care. She attended the hospital’s quarterly intensive workshop with families two weekends ago.

“She stayed for the whole thing and really found it rejuvenating,” said Connie Wilmot, director of quality management at Eastern.

“That was encouraging. It was a way of her demonstrating with her behavior her commitment. But she really enjoyed it. It wasn’t a chore for her.”

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