Roper St. Francis CEO keeps it personal

Roper St. Francis Healthcare employees who want to take an issue right to the top are welcome to just "ask David."

As president and CEO, David Dunlap's goal is to keep open the lines of communication between himself and nearly 5,000 employees, which he does through a regular distribution of monthly videos and weekly newsletters.

Dunlap receives a variety of "Ask David" e-mails. Some write thank-you notes. Others complain, like the seafood-hating woman who was unhappy that this year's Christmas party was an oyster roast. But some, he says, share good ideas.

"One of the nurses who works with the computers on wheels wrote to say that the computers needed longer-life batteries," he says. "How long would it have taken for that suggestion to come to the top otherwise?"

The notes can be sent anonymously, but anyone who signs his or her name gets a personal reply from Dunlap.

"It just lets the employees feel connected and feel a part of what we're doing here," he says.

That can be a challenge when you are the head of the largest nongovernmental employer in Charleston, with 90 facilities, services in seven counties and plans to add hospitals in Mount Pleasant and Berkeley County.

Still, it seems to be working. During Dunlap's tenure, employee satisfaction with Roper St. Francis as a place to work, measured by an annual opinion survey, has reached an all-time high. "He is a very effective leader," says John Jordan, chairman of the board of the Roper St. Francis Healthcare System and CEO of the Medical Society of South Carolina, one of its owners.

Jordan was on the committee that hired Dunlap in 2003. "Since David has been here, he's produced extraordinary results. That's one reason we are able to look at expanding."

Sparking an interest

As a boy, Dunlap's first experience with a hospital was not a good one. The middle of five children, he was 12 when his divorced mother went in for a routine operation.

"The surgery went fine," he says. "And the next day, she developed a blood clot and never came home. When that happened, I had no idea what a pulmonary embolism was."

The children, including an older brother with cerebral palsy, were scattered about, but, "We all ended up very close as a family," he says.

Losing his mother at a young age gave him the drive to succeed and sparked a lifelong interest in health care and a desire to educate the public about the dangers of deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, a public awareness campaign Roper St. Francis has undertaken.

Dunlap first worked in a hospital while he was a business administration student at the University of Memphis.

"When I realized, 'Somebody has to run this place,' I decided to go into hospital administration," he says.

He earned a master's degree in health care administration from Trinity University in San Antonio.

"This is the best job on the planet," he says. "From environmental-service workers to surgeons, I get to know a little bit about a lot of things."

Dunlap, 66, started his career in Tennessee and later was lured to Oklahoma City as CEO of the multihospital University Health Partners. He spent 15 years there, but during a management restructuring, decided to retire.

"It took me about two months to get bored," he says.

He then was tapped to serve as president/CEO of Memorial Medical Center, a two-hospital system in New Orleans, and was there in 2003 when he got a call from a recruiter about the Roper St. Francis job. He had visited cousins in Charleston and liked the area.

"I couldn't believe they were going to pay me to move to Charleston," he says.

Settling in

As he settled into his new job, he wanted to be an active member of the community.

"People say Charleston is a difficult community to break into," he says. "I'm living proof that if you want to get involved, you can. I think they welcome you."

He often is asked to serve on boards of local organizations, but is cautious about getting too involved.

"I think you have to be careful not to overdo it," he says. "Otherwise, it becomes the same people on every board."

An organization he is committed to, though, is the United Way.

He was chairman of the Oklahoma City United Way in 1995 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed.

"I saw the worst of mankind and the best of mankind," he says. "The United Way of Oklahoma City knew how to funnel the federal money and all of the resources pouring in, and I thought, 'What an amazing example of how people who live and work here are making a difference in their own community.' "

In Charleston, he wanted to get involved in the Trident United Way.

"When he moved here and we approached him, it would have been easy for him to say, 'I've done that already,' " says Chris Kerrigan, president of Trident United Way. "But he just jumped in and rolled up his sleeves and got to work."

Dunlap served as chairman of the 2007 fundraising campaign and is chairman of the board.

As campaign chair, Dunlap led the Trident United Way to its largest campaign ever. And when the final numbers for the just-completed campaign are announced Feb. 11, Kerrigan says, "We're on track for another very good year."

The largest donation in that campaign came from Roper St. Francis' employees, who gave more than $478,000. About 200 employees were leadership givers, contributing at least $1,000 each.

"Our campaign is done in a way that people want to get involved," Dunlap says. "We make it fun. There is no stigma if you don't give. We just want to give everybody a chance to get involved."

Everybody's happy

That goes back to Dunlap's mission of making the employees feel like they are part of the team.

"If you have happy employees, you have happy doctors, and happy doctors are obviously going to have happy patients," he says.

Roper St. Francis is consistently among the top in the nation on surveys of good places to work, good places to practice medicine and good places to receive care.

"One of the things that we consider ourselves to be at Roper St. Francis is not just a hospital system, but a health care system, keeping people healthy and focusing on prevention and wellness," he says.

Health care, of course, has been a hot topic in the news lately. It's a complicated issue, but Dunlap says there are some things that need fixing.

"If I were talking to someone considering a career in health care, I'd say that's the place to be the next couple of decades," he says. "Changes are coming, but whatever occurs, we're comfortable in this community.

"What I see occurring is more emphasis on quality and value. We have to stop the escalation of costs. We've got to simplify and find an efficient way of caring for people. Those are the things that keep me up at night."

Even though he's already retired once, Dunlap says he doesn't think about retiring again.

"I hope it's a long way off," he says. "I look forward to coming to work. This is the best job I've ever had. I can't imagine being in a better place than I am. As long as I am healthy, I would like to continue, and I hope that's a while.

"To use golf terms, I think this is my mulligan, and your mulligan is always better than the first shot."

Brenda Rindge can be reached at 937-5713 or at brindge@postandcourier.com.