Byline: Nichole Aksamit
Mar. 1--When a 23-year-old named Stephen Long signed on with what is now Methodist Health System, the health system was simply a hospital.
That hospital was simply one shiny tower at 83rd and Dodge Streets. And getting a better look at a patient's insides wasn't so simple: It generally meant exploratory surgery and a hospital stay.
Thirty-seven years later, as Methodist says so long to Long, the health system includes a physicians practice group, a nursing college with a new campus, a large outpatient care center, two hospitals and plans for a third.
Methodist Hospital has two towers and a cancer center. And most diagnostic tests are done with imaging studies that don't require a scalpel.
The 60-year-old Long, who has been an administrator in some form or fashion at Methodist since 1970, officially retires today. John Fraser, who has headed the system's flagship Methodist Hospital since 1997, will succeed Long as health system president and chief executive.
Long said no single event or new job prompted him to retire, but the idea had crossed his mind for a few years and a plan to hand over the reins had been in the works since early 2006.
'I just thought maybe it's time, while I'm good and healthy, to be looking at the rest of the world,'he said Wednesday in a phone interview from Arizona, where he and his wife have a second home. 'I don't have any plans, none. I'm not going to run from this job to another. I'm just going to see what the next chapter holds.'
Long joined the hospital administration in 1970, and he served as CEO of Children's Hospital from 1974 to 1985 under a management contract with Methodist Hospital. In that role, he helped Children's move its hospital from outdated quarters on the University of Nebraska Medical Center's campus into the newly constructed second tower of Methodist Hospital in 1981.
'That was quite a project,' Long recalled. 'At the time, there were maybe two or three other examples in the country where a children's hospital had come together with a general hospital but remained an independent organization.'
The arrangement allowed the hospitals to share technology and costs and gave patients and staff greater access to experts on both sides of pregnancy. 'It was great for both of our organizations,' Long said.
Children's eventually built on its own ground next to Methodist.
Long became president of Methodist Hospital in 1987 and president and CEO of Methodist Health System in 1992, succeeding John Estabrook.
He said he's most proud of maintaining the 'caring culture' Estabrook helped establish at Methodist, the stability of the health system and the long tenure of many of its staff members, and its ratings on consumer preference surveys.
Long said he has offered to help the health system informally over the next year and probably will be involved in raising money for the women's hospital Methodist plans to build at 192nd Street and West Dodge Road.
When the $100 million project was announced in 2005, hospital leaders expected its construction to begin late last year or early this year. Long said Methodist still is working toward an agreement with Children's to ensure that the new hospital has neonatal ICU services. Methodist spokesman Ed Rider said system leaders are still working on the hospital's design.
Construction is now expected to begin sometime this year.
Though winters will probably find Long in Arizona and he'll travel some, he said he plans to spend plenty of time in Omaha.
'I'll be around.'
Copyright (c) 2007, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.
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