St. Francis CEO leads expansion
By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer on Jan 1, 2013, at 2:23 AM Updated on 1/01/13 at 6:47 AM
St. Francis Health System CEO Jake Henry Jr. sits in his office at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa. JOHN CLANTON / Tulsa World
Health care is almost certain to remain a leading social, political and economic issue in 2013, which means St. Francis Health System President and Chief Executive Officer Jake Henry Jr. is almost certain to be a prominent figure in the coming year.
Besides presiding over Tulsa's largest employer and a $206 million expansion of St. Francis' main campus, Henry will serve as chairman of the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber has an intense interest in health care; two of its last three chairmen, counting Henry, have come from that field. The chamber lobbied for expansion of Medicaid coverage and has long made state funding of indigent care a legislative priority.
Henry took his first hospital job at 16, as a night orderly - make that THE night orderly - in the hospital at Sweetwater, Texas, his hometown. Henry, 66, has been in the business ever since. Although he had planned to become a college English professor, hospital administration eventually won out, and Henry ran hospitals in Texas and California before taking over at St. Francis 10 years ago.
Under Henry, St. Francis has completed a children's hospital and expanded into the suburbs. The current construction will add 150 beds and 40 emergency trauma bays by the middle of 2014. By 2015, the system intends to increase the number of Warren Clinic doctors from 315 to 400.
"When I came here, St. Francis had had five CEOs in 10 years," said Henry. "That does not make for a good organizational climate. I wanted to create some consistency and stability."
