Employee Profile - Ingrid Whipple

Title: Chief Executive Officer
Years with Montevista Hospital: 4
Hometown: North Dakota
Family: husband Ken, recently retired from the health care industry
Hobbies: Golf, reading, travel
Last vacation: Eastern European cruise

When Ingrid Whipple took the reins at Montevista Hospital in 2003, it was the only freestanding psychiatric hospital in the Las Vegas area. Now the competition is heating up — and she couldn't be happier.

"Competition is the sign of a healthy market," she says. "We're very fortunate to be in a community that's growing."

The hospital's location in Sin City presents its share of challenges. Besides a higher than average suicide rate, the community tends to be transient, and the patient population is often a mix of two extremes: the wealthy vacationers who frequent the casinos and the lower-income workers who serve them. But that's a challenge the Montevista staff handles gracefully.

"You have to have respect for the patients — and for each other," Whipple says. "That's the philosophy we operate by."

Though Whipple has spent much of her career at larger healthcare organizations, including PSI's Heritage Oaks in Sacramento, Calif., she enjoys the benefits of working at smaller facilities, like the 80-bed Montevista facility.

"I can be more of a generalist," she says. "I have the opportunity to know who all the people are, and I'm able to pay attention to the clinical side, the financial side, and the community development."
In her four years as CEO, Whipple has improved each of those areas in turn, starting with the most simple.

"I think the first year I was here, the priority was to get back to basics," Whipple says. "We started with the assessment and referral departments, asking what are we doing to make sure we're not losing admissions."

The next step was strengthening the management team and the staff as a whole, recruiting top-notch doctors and nurses and stabilizing become

"There had been a lot of leadership turnover for a while," she says. "Now there's a more cohesive management team."

With a solid reputation and management team in place, Whipple has begun to plan for a possible expansion to help serve the growing population in Vegas. But the positive changes Whipple and her team have implemented so far haven't gone unnoticed by the surrounding community. Last year, Whipple was named the most influential woman in healthcare by Business Las Vegas magazine.

While she appreciates such recognition, and has worked hard to improve the hospital's reputation in the community, it's most important for Whipple to feel that Montevista is able to live up to what it promises — quality care for people in need.

"You have to have substance behind what you're trying to promote," she says. "I think all of us who chose healthcare feel like we're doing something to better the world a little bit."