Running a hospital has got to be one of the most complex jobs you can have. In addition to the normal management challenges any business or organization faces, you must include an intricate array of government regulations, health insurance processes, perplexing finances, and emerging technologies, medicines, and medical procedures. And to top it off, doctors and your employees – the nurses, frontline and administrative personnel, and other professionals – are often caring for people on some of the worst days of their lives, when they need treatment for a serious injury or illness.
Knowing this, you can guess that the sort of person drawn to this role must be smart, focused, energetic and a strong leader. Meet Ohme Entin. She’s the president of Orlando Health St. Cloud Hospital.
“I was always interested in healthcare,” Entin said. “My mom was a nurse, so I was around nurses and healthcare professionals my entire life. But I didn’t know I wanted to do healthcare administration until I took a class at Rutgers University. My professor, Stephen Jones, was the COO of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and had great energy and great passion for the subject.”
“One day, I just asked him, ‘How do I get your job?’” Entin laughs at how naive she was. He encouraged her to get as much practical experience inside a hospital as possible before she committed to a career. She ended up working in a hospital as a unit secretary and completing an internship in hospital administration while she went to school.
“That’s when I fell in love with operations and knew I wanted to be a hospital administrator.”
That day came in November of 2020, when Entin took on the role of president of Orlando Health St. Cloud Hospital, just a few months after Orlando Health acquired the vulnerable pillar of the St. Cloud community.
She hit the ground running.
“There are so many facets to healthcare, you have to focus on the piece that resonates with you the most,” she said. “For me, it really comes back to the leadership of people. Knowing that I am not a clinician, but I still want to be as close to the care we are providing as possible. So, what I love about this role is that I get to care for the team that cares for our patients.”
A big part of Entin’s role then is to create a supportive and collegial environment for everyone who is part of a patient’s care. That team is not just the doctors and nurses, but also the people behind-the-scenes, such as those who work in the labs, are part of the supply chain, or who work in environmental services.
“This means being able to be on the frontline myself and seeing all the barriers or challenges that one could face in order to take care of a patient and being in a position to make a change that helps the whole team.”
That kind support for her team can lead to unexpected benefits for patients.
Recently, while the guest services team was doing rounds – visiting each of the patients in the hospital – one man seemed especially sad. The team found out it was the man’s 20th wedding anniversary, and because he was unexpectedly in the hospital, he hadn’t been able to get a gift for his wife. Staff members were able to get a card and some flowers and decorations for the room to surprise his wife when she came to visit later that day.
“He was able to give her the flowers and they were able to celebrate their anniversary in spite of his being in the hospital,” said Entin. “It made it really special. Those sorts of things don’t happen unless the team feels supported and is able to pay attention to the little things.”
Members of the community are taking notice. One family just dropped off a batch of frosted cupcakes, each with a letter that spelled out “Orlando Health Team Is the Best.”
This is no accident. Since St. Cloud Hospital became part of the Orlando Health system in July 2020, there has been a relentless focus on improving the level of care the hospital provides to St. Cloud residents and the wider Osceola County community.
“We have already crossed several important milestones at Orlando Health St. Cloud Hospital. And for 2022, we eagerly anticipate even more,” Entin added.
“For example, we strengthened our intensive care unit (ICU) by adding our tele-intensivist program. An intensivist is a physician who specializes in the care of critically ill patients, most often in the ICU. We have the tele-intensivists 24-7, providing patients with around-the-clock intense treatment, close monitoring, and patient-focused care. We also have a nurse practitioner seven days a week in the ICU.
We’ve also brought onboard our first dedicated chief quality officer (CQO) to lead and implement strategic plans for quality improvement and regulatory compliance. Having a CQO is an Orlando Health standard, and we were excited to add this role to our hospital and have already benefited tremendously,” Entin added.
As part of the campus master plan, the hospital is physically expanding to meet the growing needs of the community. In the months ahead, it will break ground on a new two-story building that will open in 2023. This will provide a new ICU, two catheter labs, and a new cardiology suite. And then later this year, it’s expected to open the new Orlando Health Cancer Institute – St. Cloud. This will be the organization’s fifth regional facility, and it will offer patients world-class cancer care options they’ve come to expect from Orlando Health in a space that is closer to home.
“I moved to Orlando from Texas in 2018 with my family,” Entin continued, “and it was the best move we ever made.” First serving as the chief operating officer at Orlando Health Dr. P. Philips Hospital in Orlando’s busy tourism corridor, Entin was promoted to president of Orlando Health St. Cloud Hospital two years later. She and her husband Hindolo and their two daughters, Zaria-Grace and Nova Joy, are now St. Cloud residents and loving it.
“We are very proud to call St. Cloud home and to be in this community,” she said. “It's just full of great leaders, and even though it’s growing, it has a great hometown feel. It's somewhere where you can get to know your neighbors, which is pretty nice. And for me this hospital is more than a job, it’s personal. We live here and this is the hospital that will care for me and my family if we need it.”
