Over the last six years, I have had the privilege to work with Jeff Tarrant. To steal a quote from A Tale of Two Cities, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” At the time he joined our organization, we had no clue what the healthcare world would experience with COVID-19. We were living in the “before” COVID era when we made plans, we made strategies, and we were learning our new leader. But, barely in to his tenure with our organization, the world fell apart.
The news broke about this mysterious virus shortly before the holidays in 2019, just seven months into Jeff’s tenure. He was still learning the culture of the rural South, which is quite different than rural Oklahoma, where he had most recently lived. (Or, so we thought.) Jeff was also learning how to adapt to an organization that is an anomaly in the healthcare world – an independent hospital. We weren’t owned by a larger health system, but the bulk of Jeff’s career had been spent in fast-paced, cutthroat world of health systems. Now this differentiation may not mean anything to the regular person but for those of us in healthcare, we know there are some big differences. The strategies, the pace, the demands are much greater in health systems versus a standalone facility. As we would learn during the pandemic, the resources can be much greater in health systems. There are more supplies, more staff, more analysts to help guide the way.
The reality slowly began to emerge that the virus wasn’t limited to Asia, India, Africa, or Europe. It was spreading. And fast. For me, the reality of what we were dealing with didn’t really set in until months later. As healthcare professionals, we were dealing with the unprecedented. No matter what size system or hospital we’d ever worked with prior, none had a rulebook for how to survive managing healthcare in a pandemic. Bureaucracy, that had been a staple for systems, was not an obstacle for us. But, as an independent hospital, we didn’t have the massive stockpiles of masks, hand sanitizers, thermometers. The things we took for granted, right down to the toilet paper, were suddenly on the agendas of every leadership meeting.
I remember sitting in leadership meetings with the key players in materials, nursing, and emergency management, when Jeff pushed, as hard as I’d ever seen anyone push. He didn’t take “no” for an answer. He put a period at the end of the sentence when he said he wanted results. He told us that “hope was not a strategy.” And, at first, I didn’t understand it. I thought, “Man, we are under enough pressure!” But, as the days of the pandemic went by, I learned why he persevered. We had patients to take care of and without his insistence that anything less than “yes” wasn’t acceptable, we would not have been able to been the resource for our community as we were.
We first received patients from the south Georgia area. As we braced for their arrival, we quickly realized that we had to make plans for non-essential workers to work remotely. Shortly thereafter, the hospital became a much quieter and somber place. Many offices were dark and those of us who were present in the building were handling patient volumes that we’d never seen before. Higher patient volumes meant we needed more staff, more supplies, and more of everything we didn’t have. But, Jeff pushed on. He pushed us to come up with creative solutions to impossible problems. He pushed us to continue planning for our future through strategic revenue generating activities. We weren’t even sure what, or if, a future would remain when the pandemic was over.
We rode the “waves” with outbreaks and listened to codes being called over the intercom more frequently than any of us could fathom. Frontline staff sometimes thought that the leadership team just didn’t care. They pushed for more money, they pushed for more incentives, they pushed for things that we just didn’t have the bandwidth to give. At least not responsibly. Somehow, with Jeff’s business acumen, he knew the hard decisions he would make during those dark days would ultimately lead to a brighter, stronger future.
Now, was it easy? Not by a long shot. Remember, Jeff was new to our organization and I’d barely had time to learn his leadership style before the world went to pot. He didn’t have time to sit down at a table and learn all about me as a leader. Needless to say, this didn’t always end up with us on the same page. Many times, I was on the receiving end of his “aggressive typing,” which I now tease him about. I was challenged and corrected, and it was downright painful at times. I didn’t understand him and he didn’t understand me. Often, I thought I just wasn’t good enough for the job. I felt like I had to be missing something.
Truth is, I was. I was missing the understanding of all the moving parts for which Jeff was responsible. My world was microscopic compared to all of the pieces that he had. In order for all of those parts to move like a well-trained symphony orchestra, he had to fine tune everything. He had to push for outcomes and not settle for less. It took me several years to really grasp his style. It also took several years for Jeff to understand me. But, in the end, I saw him. I saw that in order for us an organization to sustain this healthcare utopia we have, we have to push. Sometimes even aggressively, unrelentingly, and passionately.
Once things clicked for us, I believe that he saw me for the real me. The unfiltered, potty mouth, discerning HR Director that I am. (As a sidebar, I think I even made up new cuss words when Jeff was pushing for outcomes.) More importantly, I saw him for the leader that he is. I saw him push for us to be morally right, no matter what. I will never forget the day I met with him about an agreement that would, in essence, help an employee save their home. It was just days before Christmas that year and I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in the employee abiding by the agreement. I knew it was right for the organization’s needs at the time but he knew that it was morally right for the employee. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was the “right thing to do” and that was why he was signing off on it.
He wasn’t a gambler with business strategies but that day, he chose to do the risky thing because it was the right thing. In a time when CEO’s at other organizations are going to jail for embezzling or padding their own pockets, Jeff Tarrant chose our community to do the right thing, even when it was the hard thing. He chose to push hard, he chose to not settle, and rarely let others see the tender side that is just right beneath the surface. He chose to save our little hospital and our little community, and what more powerful of a legacy can one leave?
Happy Retirement, Jeff. I wish I’d seen you sooner.
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