Mercy Hospital Jefferson in Crystal City has new leadership.
Dan Eckenfels, 48, of the Fenton area is now the hospital’s president. He had been the hospital’s vice president of finance and chief administrative officer and was promoted to the top job after Eric Ammons, who had been the hospital’s president for the past 10 years, received his own promotion.
Ammons is now the regional president for Mercy, which has begun serving new communities in southeast Missouri.
In August, Mercy and SoutheastHEALTH announced an agreement for SoutheastHEALTH to join Mercy. If the agreement receives customary regulatory and third-party approvals, current SoutheastHEALTH locations, including hospitals in Cape Girardeau and Dexter, would be added to Mercy.
On Oct. 1, Mercy began operating Mercy Hospital Perry in Perryville under a lease agreement.
Both Ammons and Eckenfels took over their new roles on Oct. 18.
Eckenfels
Eckenfels, who has a master’s degree in accountancy from the University of Missouri in Columbia, has worked in the health care field for about 25 years.
In 2011, he became the hospital’s chief financial officer (CFO). When the hospital became part of Mercy in 2013, his title changed to vice president of finance for Mercy Health System.
Eckenfels, a 1993 Fox High School graduate, said he wants to build on what has been accomplished at Mercy Jefferson over the past decade.
“We’ve seen a lot of tremendous growth,” he said. “We brought in a lot of specialties over the years or added to the specialties that we’ve had. Today, we have more GI physicians, more orthopedic physicians, more cardiologists than we had 10 years ago. We built a new oncology center.
“So, what we want to see over the next five to 10 years is really just a continuation of that growth, adding specialists. We actually have nearly the full contingent of specialties you could be looking for when you’re seeking out health care. We would just like to be able to offer a more robust set of those folks to help support them.”
Eckenfels said they also want to continue to add primary care providers in Jefferson County.
“We want to continue to be able to be where the patients are so they don’t have to always travel to seek their care,” he said.
Eckenfels said Mercy has invested heavily in virtual care.
“We want to make it easier for patients to interact with the providers as much as we can,” he said.
Eckenfels said it’s possible Mercy Jefferson may see the need to expand its facility over the next five to 10 years.
“I can see us getting to the point where we will outgrow our cancer center (which opened in late December 2017 as one part of the hospital’s $157 million expansion and renovation project). We are blessed to be able to care for the patients who need that service,” he said. “We’ve nearly exceeded the capacity of the facility. We’re not there yet, but as we get to that point, we could see a need to expand that there.”
Eckenfels said he also thinks there could be a need for expanding surgical suites over time, as well as medical office space the hospital has for providers.
“From an inpatient perspective, if you’re not aware, our tower was built (in 2017) with the ability to add two more stories onto it,” he said. “That’s really dependent on the growth of the community because it’s a balance.”
Eckenfels said inpatient care is changing.
Mercy, in collaboration with Maribel Health, launched Mercy Hospital-at-Home program on Sept. 19, starting in the larger hospitals, he said.
The program provides hospital-level care in the comfort and convenience of a patient’s home.
Mercy plans to initiate the program in the St. Louis region this fall and eventually expand across all the communities Mercy serves.
Through the program, patients who meet certain criteria would have the chance to receive their care at home rather than being admitted to a hospital, or to transition home after a brief hospital stay.
“Over the next decade, I can see where we’re caring for some of our inpatients in their home for certain conditions,” Eckenfels said, adding that “it’s not for everyone.”
The aging workforce is a continuing issue for health care, he said.
“I think the greatest challenge a lot of us have, as the aging population and health care needs continue to grow, is that we also have an aging workforce,” he said. “Replacing the workforce is probably one of our greatest challenges.
“We want to support all of our coworkers here. We want to make sure they have the resources they need. (Our caregivers) are very passionate about taking care of their patients. And really all they ask for is to have everything they need to be able to do that. And we want to be able to supply that. I think one of our greatest challenges is ensuring that they’ll have the coworker support that’s necessary.”
Eckenfels said the hospital does use contracted workers at times when needed, adding that Mercy Jefferson is better off right now, as far as staffing is concerned, than a lot of its counterparts across the country.
He emphasized that the hospital’s goal is to provide the best care.
“We’re excited to carry on what Eric Ammons has done here over the last decade,” Eckenfels said. “He’s taken us to really high levels from a quality perspective. We’re a four-star CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) hospital, which is one of the highest ratings you can have. Five stars, the highest, those are pretty rare. That’s our goal to achieve that five-star status.
“I really want to continue the quality that he brought to this facility, maintain the culture that he’s built here over the last decade and just continue our pursuit of offering the highest quality care to all our patients.”