BUCKHANNON, W.Va. — John Forester is a builder.
For more than three decades, including the last 18 years with WVU Medicine, the new president and CEO of St. Joseph’s Hospital has helped build and expand health care operations across West Virginia. The Elkins Corridor Medical Center, a 38,000-square-foot building that opened in Randolph County last September, was one of the projects Forester worked on before he came to Buckhannon.
His new job was not on the roadmap a year ago.
“It was completely unexpected, to be honest with you,” Forester said in an interview at the hospital recently.
He had just finished running two hospitals as interim president and CEO at Summersville Regional Medical Center and Braxton County Memorial Hospital, while keeping most of his duties at United Hospital Center.
“As a vice president there, I oversaw a large physician group. I did a lot of merger acquisitions and development work,” Forester said. “So I was wearing three or four hats, and when I got to the end of that, I thought, ‘It’s time to slow down a little bit.’”
He went to his boss, Dr. David Hess, president and CEO of WVU Medicine United Hospital Center and the health system’s Central Region president, and told him he was ready for a change.
“I think it’s time to start landing the plane,” Forester said he told Hess.
But as that was happening, Skip Gjolberg, who had led St. Joseph’s Hospital for nearly a decade, decided to step down. Hess asked Forester if he would do the interim thing again, just for a little while.
“He was like, ‘You know what, we still need you,’” Forester said. “Not everybody has that opportunity, so I appreciated that greatly.”
Forester took the interim job at St. Joseph’s Hospital in March, fully expecting to hand it off to a permanent replacement.
“If you’d asked me five months ago, I would have said that I’m here to help. I’ll get us through to the next president,” he said.
Then he started walking the halls, meeting with staff and exploring the Upshur County community.
“Everybody wants to do a good job here, you can tell,” he said. “A good hospital has a strong performance improvement process, and people who are engaged in that. That is certainly the case here at St. Joseph’s Hospital.”
Almost immediately, Forester got a vibe about the hospital — a good one.
“The interactions with staff members and patients have all been very, very positive,” he said. “The hospital is extremely clean and well taken care of.”
People around the community started asking Forester why he didn’t just stay.
“I started to fall in love with the hospital and fall in love with the staff,” he said. “As things got more involved and I started working more closely with the employees here and being a part of the community, it became clear to me that this was the path I was supposed to take.”
WVU Medicine made it official July 30.
“During his time as interim president and CEO, he earned the trust of our employees, providers and community, while positioning St. Joseph’s Hospital for continued growth and success,” Hess said in the announcement.
Forester made it clear that he’s a builder first and foremost, and he’s ready to get to work. He immediately started going through the various buildings and departments to see what was too crowded, what needed more space, and how to make that happen.
“The closet architect in my mind loves to look at space and try to figure it out,” he said. “That’s what I’ve done for a long time. Having the opportunity to try to fix some of those things internally and make the hospital better, make the care better, make it more patient-centered — that excites me.”
He also signaled where St. Joseph’s Hospital is headed.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about what’s the next phase for the hospital here,” Forester said. “We are out of space. The facility is aging.”
Forester has hired an outside firm to perform the building’s first full assessment in more than a decade.
“We want to look at that, and then strategize,” he said. “What is the next phase? What does the hospital need to look like?”
Forester is inheriting a facility in a very different position than the one Gjolberg walked into. St. Joseph’s Hospital joined WVU Medicine in 2016 and converted to critical access status, a federal designation that pays small rural hospitals a higher rate for care.
Under WVU Medicine, the hospital stabilized financially, expanded clinical programs and was recognized as one of the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the country. In November, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals sided with St. Joseph’s Hospital in its long-running fight to protect that critical access designation from Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital’s expansion plans in Weston.
Asked whether the hospital is on solid financial ground now, Forester did not hesitate.
“Oh yeah. Absolutely,” he said. “St. Joseph’s [is] in a very strong financial position. Skip was a good steward of the finances here, and obviously he was looking at opportunities to grow programs and grow services here, which definitely benefited the hospital. I’m very fortunate that I get to inherit a hospital that is doing well.”
He said being part of the West Virginia University Health System is why hospitals like St. Joseph’s are still open.
“It has allowed our hospitals to stay open, quite honestly — and not just stay open, but thrive,” he said. “I got to be on calls and be a part of the discussions [with other hospitals], and if they were still freestanding or on their own, they would be struggling. Or if they weren’t critical access hospitals, they would not be able to provide care.”
He knows the model from the inside. Forester began his career in 1992 as a billing clerk at Sistersville General Hospital, later becoming business office manager and chief financial officer there.
“We were one of the first critical access hospitals in the state,” he said.
But Forester framed strong finances as a means, not an end.
“Doing well allows us to invest back into the hospital, and into the employees,” he said. “No margin, no mission. We’ve got to have a margin to be able to invest in technology and replace equipment and remodel space.”
The emergency room is Forester’s most immediate challenge.
Among critical access hospitals, he said, St. Joseph’s Hospital runs the second-busiest ER in the health system.
“One of the most surprising things about rural health care that I’ve come across,” he said, “is how busy small hospitals actually are.”
“Small rural hospitals, sometimes people make the assumption that they’re not that busy,” Forester said. “They’re busy. And the number of rooms, the space constraints, make it even busier and more challenging.”
Obstetrics is another pressure point. There, the problem is success.
“Our OB programming has gotten busier,” Forester said. “We are delivering more babies now than ever before. The month of July was the highest number of deliveries we’ve had here at the hospital in history.”
After welcoming 45 babies last month, Forester does not expect that to slow down as other West Virginia hospitals close their labor and delivery units.
“I see that continuing to grow, and we have to respond to that,” he said.
Looking forward, Forester sees growth in many areas: women’s health, imaging, cardiopulmonary, oncology and infusion.
“We have space constraints in the ER as I’ve mentioned, but also in imaging services, cardiopulmonary — our oncology and infusion areas are undersized,” Forester said. “So in 10 years, those are the things that you’ll see grow. That outpatient footprint, being able to provide some of those services on an ambulatory basis, will grow.”
Forester said the hospital’s place in the system is what will make that growth possible.
“Being part of a large health system like WVU Medicine — that’s one of the big advantages,” he said. “There are a lot of resources and people who want to help. They’ll figure out a way to make something work for you.”
He saw what that meant in Summersville, where the hospital added oncology services and expanded its infusion program while he was there. Before that, cancer patients drove to Morgantown, Clarksburg or Charleston for treatment.
“You’re already sick, you’re feeling terrible, and then you have to get in the car and drive for three hours a day to get someplace and have treatment. Those are things we need to keep close to home,” he said. “Having those connections within the system to be able to pull those resources is just invaluable.”
Forester and his wife have three daughters and four grandchildren. A few months in, he’s enjoying life in Buckhannon.
“I like it,” he said. “It’s a busy downtown area. You’ve got CJ Maggie’s right there on Main Street, and Stone Tower and other places. It’s been good. I’m happy to be here.”
