Freemon Walker, Interim President, St. Luke’s Health – Sugar Land Hospital
Fort Bend County is experiencing rapid population growth, prompting local organizations to focus on maintaining key services. “Fort Bend County is probably one of the fastest-growing counties in Texas. We are seeing a rapidly growing population and it’s going to grow even more over the next five years,” Freemon Walker, interim president of St. Luke’s Health-Sugar Land Hospital, told Invest:.
How is population growth in Fort Bend County impacting St. Luke’s and the services it provides?
Fort Bend County is probably one of the fastest-growing counties in Texas. We are seeing a rapidly growing population, and it’s going to grow even more over the next five years. As a matter of fact, they’re projecting the population growth to average about a 6.3% annual increase, which is almost close to a million additional people coming into the Fort Bend County area.
With that many people moving to Fort Bend County, we want to make sure that we can continue serving our community by growing key services and key access points so that those services remain available throughout Fort Bend.
Regarding key access points, that means adding more primary care to our demographic area, creating access points for the different communities in which we serve. We are close to the Texas Medical Center, but we understand our community here in Fort Bend County, and we know that they do not want to drive to the Texas Medical Center to receive services. We’re doing our best to keep key services at the local institution so that our community doesn’t have to travel 30 to 45 minutes to the Texas Medical Center.
What is your strategy regarding partnerships to help the community?
We partner a lot with a lot of nonprofit organizations here in the local community that provide key services. Our community grant initiatives are part of that. For instance, just this year, we awarded two organizations with $26,500 in grant opportunities to continue doing the work that they are doing throughout the community. All this aligns with our mission as part of the CommonSpirit health system.
How are you ensuring financial sustainability for your hospital, but also maintaining high-quality patient care?
We have an obligation as a nonprofit healthcare organization to give back to our community. It’s pertinent for us to continue to operate and to continue to invest to make our operations efficient. We are always looking at opportunities to provide services more efficiently. For instance, in our primary care clinics, we have opportunities to provide telehealth and virtual visits. This means patients don’t have to come into our clinics. They can schedule virtual care appointments, which don’t require as many resources as are needed when a patient comes into a clinic.
Regarding the hospital, we are continuing to focus on efficient operations to see more patients and to be able to provide high-quality outcomes for our patients.
How are you leveraging new technologies to create efficiencies for your team, and also to enhance patient outcomes?
Technology is constantly changing, and it’s constantly beneficial for us in the healthcare sector. One of the technologies that we use in our partnership with our local EMS agencies is Pulsara. Pulsara is a communication tool that allows us to communicate with our EMS partners before patients arrive at our hospitals. It provides us with information that allows us to be ready to receive those patients. For example, Pulsara can provide information on a patient who is in cardiac arrest. We can then activate our STEMI (ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction) teams and be ready to go once the patient arrives. That type of technology helps us to be more efficient in our operations.
What are your top goals over these next two to three years?
Over the next two to three years, we will be looking at the healthcare landscape in terms of planning and reimbursement, but the No. 1 goal is to maintain our high-quality service for our local community, making sure that we are taking good care of our patients.
The No. 2 goal is to take care of our workforce, grow our workforce, and provide our workforce with the resources to be successful and to continue to provide the care that our community needs.
Our third goal would be around ensuring the successful financial operations of our company, of our hospital here in Sugar Land. We want to be able to continue to invest in our community. Being financially viable is key to being able to offer those services for our community. Those would be my top three priorities.
