In the first year and a half that Troy DeDecker has been the interim Chief Executive Director at Bartow Regional Medical Center he feels like he and hospital has done a lot, but it won’t stop there, he said.

At the end of last month DeDecker was named the chief executive officer of the hospital by the board of directors, beating another applicant, it announced.

“I feel like we’ve done a lot,” said DeDecker, 42, who has been at the hospital since the summer of 2010. “Perhaps the biggest is working on the partner with physicians and those on our medical staff. That’s a pretty important thing because there’s not a service we can provide without physicians.”

He said that was a big move that had to be made, improving the relationship with physicians.

However, there have been other places the hospital has done in his first 18 months in Bartow.

When I took over in July of 2010 we were doing well financially and we ended
up the year very strong. We had a good year last year. The biggest accomplishment was becoming a stroke center. It took work to get neurologists.”

The hospital went from one staff neurologists to now having four and it took about
90 days to
becoming state certified, a
quick accomplishment,
he said. The
hospital is now a primary stroke center which is state certified, however, it is not yet a certfied stroke center as recognized by JACO, a
medical agency that would inspect the operation to make sure it is following its rules.

“We had many of the elements in place, but the thing we had to do was getting the neurologists in place.”

He said to become a stroke center, the hospital has to be staffed with a neurologist seven days a week who can take care of patients who
are stroke symptoms and treat them effectively and efficiently.

The difference makes a big deal, said Shaiesh Rajgueru, the hospital’s director of neurology and stroke.

“We can devote care to people in the community and being a closest facility and that we have the coverage 24-7 we can provide the appropriate care we previously could not.”

Other things that have been accomplished in since he’s been here include expanding the parking lot and the hospital is currently working on developing the da Vinci method of surgery, which is a high-tech form of surgery where people don’t have to be cut open at all.

“Our goal is to do the first by the end of this month,” he said. “We’ve been training on this since December.”

The da Vinci surgical procedure is categorized as a minimally invasive procedure where by using a small instrument and looking through a computerized screen, relatively complex operations can be formed. With it doctors have to be trained, almost going back to school to re-learn operational techniques.

A department that DeDecker is particularly proud of is the hospital’s emergency room.

“On any given day I get more positive feedback on our emergency room, not just from staff but from those outside the hospital,” he said.

The hospital’s website has a banner that shows the waiting time in the emergency room is about five minutes and that low waiting time is advantageous in such a large county that numbers 600,000 people, though the hospital of course doesn’t have clients from an area that is that large. Its client base comes from South
Lakeland, Bartow, Fort Meade, Mulberry, rural south Polk County and northern Hardee County. He also said the hospital has drawn patients from as far away as Manatee County.

He admits the hospital has to keep in mind the growth that is sure to come.

“Obviously as the population in the county continues to grow we’ll have to recruit new physicians. Right now we’re working on those types of things.”

DeDecker has a
master’s of Health Service Administration from the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He received a bachelor’s of Science in Physical Therapy from the University of North Florida and a Master’s of Health
Service Administration
degree from the University
of Kansas School of
Medicine.

He served as Director of Rehab Services, Cyberknife, Radiation Oncology and Sarcoma Institute at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, Kansas from 2001-2006. He served as Director of Quality and Risk Management at Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, Missouri.

And he most recently served as the vice president of Operations and Interim Chief Operating Officer at HCA’s Research Medical
Center in Kansas City, Mo.