Aug 3, 2022 4 min read

As a young band director, one of my aspirations was to either have my band accepted to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade or to be invited to perform at a presidential inauguration. We did get invited to march for an inauguration, but it was for the president of Mexico, and I’m still not sure how that even happened, but we didn’t attend.

When health-care executive administration became my field, of course my dream was to have our hospital rated as one of the best hospitals in the United States. That dream intensified after a visit to Danville, Pa., and the Geisinger Health System where I saw what could happen in a small lumber town when someone brought serious vision to the table.

Yes, we did get some recognition during my 20-plus years, but it wasn’t until after my departure that things started to really heat up. About six months after I left, the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute visited the then-Windber Research Institute and rated its biorepository as the only platinum quality biorepository in the United States. (At that time, a designation like that most probably could have been considered an international designation.) Not unlike that Appleseed guy, the seeds had been planted, but the credit and recognition that followed rightfully belonged to people like Dr. Stella Somiari, Dr. Richard Mural, and the new CEO at the time, Tom Kurtz.

As a health-care consultant who was busy on the road taking credit for what we had accomplished in Windber, my greatest fear was the demise of the hospital, and under its former leadership, that reality came within months of occurring. After about five years of meteoritic decline, that CEO left and WRI’s Tom Kurtz agreed to take on the responsibility of not only the research institute but also the hospital. He was faced with millions of dollars of debt and was literally using his own retirement savings some months to help make payroll when necessary, but then things began to look up.

First he pursued a heart catheterization laboratory, then he made a connection with the world’s most financially successful physician, Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the rest is already history. What do I mean by history? The hospital has been rated as one of the top two small hospitals in the United States and is one of a handful of five-star hospitals in Pennsylvania and the United States. That five-star designation comes from none other than the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, CMS, and, believe me when I tell you, designations like that are not influenced by anything except the facts.

Yes, the Windber Medical Center, now designated as the not-for-profit Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center in Windber, is still a small primary care, rural Pennsylvania hospital. One of Windber’s greatest assets is that of always doing the right thing for the patient, which means, in no uncertain terms, getting them to the right tertiary care hospital for more advanced care when needed. But they are the Best of Show, the premier provider in the area at their level of care.

Oh, and that little Research Institute next door, the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine Windber, affectionately referred to in scientific circles as “The Windber,” is also still a nonprofit organization that is housed under the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation. That research institute, because of a partnership formed over 20 years ago in concert with Congressman Jack Murtha and Dr. Craig Shriver, is currently the home for over 500,000 donated tissue samples that are being used to research every type of cancer plaguing mankind.

Bottom line, dreams do come true. They don’t always happen when you may want them to happen or when you hope they will, but under the very thoughtful and purposeful leadership of Tom Kurtz, Windber Medical Center and Research Institute are both thriving because that’s what a good leader can do.

Nick Jacobs of Windber is a health-care consultant and author of two books.