Brian Helleland has kept the business card makers at Providence, one of the West Coast’s largest hospital systems, very busy the past few years.
“I set a record in the last few years—I’ve had seven different titles,” Helleland said. “It gets very confusing.”
The latest job title for Helleland is as permanent chief executive for Providence’s Orange County/High Desert service area, where he oversees four hospitals.
Three of those hospitals are among Orange County’s six biggest, including St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo and St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.
Altogether, they employ 8,300 workers and generated $2.3 billion in revenue for the year ended Sept. 30, 2022.
To top it off, Helleland personally oversees St. Joseph Hospital, where he has a ground-floor office with a view of the parking lot.
Under the current structure, Laura Ramos continues to have individual oversight of St. Jude, while Seth Teigen remains in charge of Mission Hospital. Both report to Helleland.
“With more than 27 years of executive experience in healthcare delivery, Brian has a wealth of experience in building clinical programs and services in collaboration with nursing, physician and community partners,” Laureen Driscoll, CEO of the Providence South Division, said in a Nov. 28 statement announcing the new title.
“Equally important is Brian’s dedication to our mission and values, and his unwavering passion for building a culture of servant leadership.”
M&A Experience
Born in a small Minnesota town with less than 2,000 residents, Helleland grew up on a farm where his family owned about 120 cows on 380 acres. He didn’t particularly enjoy the lifestyle, seeing more opportunity in medicine.
Inspired by an aunt who was a nurse practitioner and other relatives in the industry, he decided to become a doctor, majoring in pre-med. For one college essay, he interviewed two doctors and two administrators.
“I was focused on being a doctor. I didn’t even know administrators existed,” he said.
After the interviews, Helleland said he “was more impressed with the executives.”
He decided to switch his focus, earning a Master of Health Services Administration degree at Arizona State University.
His first job out of college was at Western Arizona Regional Medical Center, a small hospital that was looking to sell itself. Helleland was invited to sit in the negotiations where he learned firsthand about mergers and acquisitions.
Then his boss brought him along to Phoenix Baptist Hospital, which had been decertified. Helleland dove into the minutia to get it recertified, putting together action plans and learning from consultants with decades of experience.
“I was a sponge,” he recalled.
In 2006, he joined Providence St. Jude as chief operating officer. About a decade ago, he convinced the board of directors that the hospital needed to improve its culture.
“My quote that I use a lot of the time is ‘Our job as leaders is to make the intangibles tangible.’
“Culture is an intangible thing,” he said. “As a leader, how do we communicate it in a tangible tactical way so that our leaders know what they can do to influence culture in the way that we want?
“What I saw was the potential for a unique collaboration that generated pride and the commitment to warrant the outcome that we were looking for.”
In Helleland’s view, if culture is improved, treatment of patients will improve, the hospital will rank higher on independent surveys and that in turn will attract more talented doctors and more patients, Helleland said.
“That’s definitely what we proved,” he said. “As we made that commitment, there was an absolute direct correlation with our clinical outcomes, our patient experience outcomes, our financial outcomes.”
He’s a big fan of quotes, like “success doesn’t equal greatness,” “pace of excellence,” “our family caring for your family” and “expectations plus structures equals accountability.”
Culture Focus
Providence is one of the nation’s largest healthcare systems, with 117,000 employees, including 36,000 nurses and 34,000 physicians, at 51 hospitals.
Providence has restructured its California and regional business a couple times in recent years, which has led to advancements for several longtime area hospital execs, such as Eric Wexler, who is now chief operating officer for Providence.
A recent Helleland position was to oversee 11 hospitals in Southern California, including as an interim CEO at Burbank for almost a year until he found a replacement.
Providence a couple years ago consolidated seven divisions to three. At that time, he became chief operating officer of California, overseeing 17 hospitals.
“It felt like I was chasing 17 hospitals,” Helleland recalled.
Providence then decided to break California into four service areas, assigning Helleland to his current role.
Building Boom
Orange County is a hospital building boom, with the City of Hope, UCI Medical and Hoag each spending billions of dollars on new hospitals and clinics.
Providence itself is in construction mode, too.
Mission Hospital is planning to spend $712 million over the next seven years to expand its operations in South Orange County, including a new hospital building at its current campus.
In 2021, St. Joseph kicked off work on a new 137,000-square-foot Helen Caloggero Women’s and Family Center, which is scheduled to open in early 2024.
Nonetheless, Helleland agrees with the industry’s general trend toward more outpatient services, and he doesn’t foresee the building of more hospitals in Orange County.
Changing Skill Set
Helleland said his skill set has changed over the decades.
“In the early part of my career, I was known for turning around the quality for two or three hospitals,” he said.
Then he became known as an expert on operations.
“I love operations, I love knowing every single department.
“Today, what I’m known for is creating culture with caregivers, leadership teams, physicians.”
Providence in 2016 acquired St. Joseph, which has won several awards, notably ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the Los Angeles Metro Best Regional Hospital in 15 types of care like kidney disease and lung cancer surgery.
Helleland said he’s still in an assessment mode at St. Joseph, eyeing areas where it can improve. He intends to implement a three-to-five-year plan surrounding culture, like what he did at St. Jude.
“The starting point is very good. We’re going to go after greatness.”
