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DEBORAH DAVIS
Senior Vice President
Pitt County Memorial Hospital

August 7, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson

Beth Nelson: Let's talk about pertinent aspects of your background, where you grew up and what brought you here.

Deborah Davis: I am actually from eastern North Carolina. I was not born here but have lived in eastern North Carolina since I was three years old. My family is still to this day in Jacksonville as is my husband's family, so I really have been in eastern North Carolina all my life.

Beth Nelson: So you grew up in Jacksonville and then you went on to college.

Deborah Davis: Actually it was kind of interesting, I actually originally started off at N. C. State and it was uncommon then in the early seventies, but I actually started off then as a computer science major. I never really intended to go into health care but after about a year of getting up at 3:00 a.m. and having to go to the computer lab at N. C. State I decided that was not something I wanted to do the rest of my life. I actually transferred to East Carolina in the business program and gave up my scholarship as a part of that process and I had to go to work and that is actually how I wound up at PCMH. Even back in those days in the mid-seventies, PCMH was still one of the largest employers in Pitt County and I had to be in a situation that I could work full time and go to school full time which was an interesting combination and Pitt was willing to allow me to do that even back in the mid-seventies. That was a nice combination which allowed me to complete my education and yet work full time to put myself through school. It was an interesting combination with being a business major back in the seventies was not someone you typically saw working in a hospital environment so it was kind of an unusual perspective. In those days you have to remember that it was coming to the little red brick buildings for an eighteen year old really having her first major job it was still a pretty big undertaking particularly when you had to go to work in the basement every day which is where Materials Services was at that time. That was the job which I started in and it was under the Materials Services Division and it was actually located in the basement along with the Morgue, the employee cafeteria, our one PT was actually located in the basement when that started in 1976. It was the only rehab service that we had at that time for the entire facility which was then about 200 beds. We often talk about what it was like, we were interestingly enough in this day and time in the year 2000 for a hospital who is very busy, who struggles daily with how do we take care of all our patients and get them in the building but it was interesting back in 1975 when I came we had exactly the same problem. Then you were allowed to put patients in the hallways with the little screens around them like you see on MASH. Fortunately we can't do that anymore legally although sometimes we don't have much choice in our Emergency Department. Back in 1975 that was a pretty typical day to go up on any of the units and see patients in the hallways with the fold screen like you used to see on MASH in order to be able to provide the services. The same was true in every area, we talked earlier about the Emergency Department, we are getting ready to undertake a major $25 million expansion to our Emergency Services Division. We see probably 60,000 patients a year now and in 1975 the Emergency Department waiting area, is jokingly referred to as two chairs, that's all there was and it serviced the entire County and we were still even then in the early days seeing some patients coming from out of County to receive the services because of the fine medical staff we had in Greenville. Just backing the ambulance up to what was then the little loading dock it served basically as multipurpose. It is where we got supplies, it is where we unloaded patients for the Emergency Department and all those services were rendered in an area that was a very small area which probably would fit in two of our exam rooms now, the entire Emergency Department. It was an interesting beginning.

Beth Nelson: What about your first job? It is a huge division now but I am sure it was very small then. What was your position?

Deborah Davis: Well, Materials Services in those days encompassed a lot of different things. It included all the purchasing, all central services, all the accounts payable functions, all the mail delivery, and there are still not but just a few of us who worked in the division. All the mail delivery throughout the entire complex, all the patient mail, that was all Materials Services in that day and time so it was a much different scale operation. I actually began doing some mail sorting. We basically all had to cover all bases because there wasn't one defined job. Everybody had to do a little bit of everything and for most of the early years I did things like matching up receiving slips for accounts payable to actually pay the bills. You have to remember in those days and times prior to moving into this facility our annual budget was less than $5 million when I first came. So, you are talking about your entire purchases would not have been probably close to a $1 million compared to now we are talking about a $400 million operation so times have changed. At that time we literally had to do a little bit of everything. All the Pharmacy IV deliveries were done through Materials Services in glass bottles. It is just scary to think about them in this day and time in terms of the safety issues but everything was done that way. Our central processing was in a room probably not as big as the room we are sitting in now but it probably was not any bigger than a 10 x 15 area. I used to watch the ladies do a wonderful job packing all the instrumentation and sterilizing and processing that because it was done in a very small area at the time. I got a chance from the very beginning I guess from the ground up. You get asked a lot in terms of from leadership positions if you have really been there and done it and do you understand the jobs and while I don't profess in this day and time to understand the jobs because they have changed so much, I certainly can relate to at least what has to go into the dedication of the employees to make sure those things are done and done right. I did get the chance to see a lot of those different components.

Beth Nelson: Why did you choose the hospital as the place to work? Was there a job advertisement that you answered or was there this the thought that this was a major employer and thought you could have a chance on working here? What was the thought on that?

Deborah Davis: It was a major employer at the time and it was one of the few areas that would allow me to work-I started out working from 3:00 - 11:00 p.m. so that I could go to school during the day. My husband to be was already working here. I had other folks that I knew in the hospital. There were folks like Buck Sitterson that I met very early on who just came across as somebody who really wanted to help a college student and supply a job and that I could meet a need for the hospital and that I was willing to be flexible with my hours and it just was a good fit from the beginning. We didn't have but about maybe 450 employees when I came versus 4,500 almost now. We had about seventy physicians. It was a very different environment in a lot of ways although I think we have been able to retain some of that. It was very much that if you were willing to be flexible and come and work different hours and you were willing to do multiple jobs and willing to learn, which I certainly was, they were willing to work with me and still let me meet my obligations in terms of going to school.

Beth Nelson: You said there were how many physicians?

Deborah Davis: I think there were about seventy on the medical staff when I came. Along in that period of time, I actually came in January of 1975, and so it was along that time when there was a decision being made to really develop the medical school and I think that probably somewhere in that timeframe of about six months before and six months after we were starting to begin to feel a little bit of a growth. I clearly remember coming and Dr. Vick and Dr. Longino and a few of those folks, Dr. Welch that I met long after that and some of those folks who really provided a lot of leadership from the medical staff over the years who were very much visible in the early days in terms of the leadership role they took. Even more so in the operations in some sense in those early days because they were always there. Basically the nursing coordinators and a few of the physician leaders, and you have to understand, and I guess John Stallings probably came along, but the nursing folks ran the pharmacy and basically did most of the laboratory services and George Williams was one of the very earliest ones in the Lab but basically it was a pretty close knit group of folks that did everything. I used to walk into the little coffee shop on the first floor of what we call now the old hospital and it wasn't unusual to see one of our doctors flipping the hamburgers for the Service League. It was a totally different kind of environment and it was something that most of us just weren't used to growing up. Even then you just didn't walk into an environment that people pulled together and supported one another and really had a common goal in terms of taking care of patients. I think that is one of the things that those of us who started early have tried so hard to protect because it had such a profound effect on us. I know it did on me personally between growing up in eastern North Carolina and seeing the health care needs first hand from my family and having to travel to the Triangle and then coming into that kind of an environment and understanding you really could move forward and accomplish things if people just pulled together. That was really probably one of the deciding factors as to why I stayed in health care because I never intended frankly to stay in health care. I fully intended to go into the private sector in a business leadership role.

Beth Nelson: Let's go back your recollection of the mood of the place when you came. Construction would have been if not underway, very close to being started at the point you came in 1975.

Deborah Davis: It had not started at that time, in fact, I can remember beginning to look at some of the way we used to do little mock up models and there was a mock up model that actually sat in the front entry area of the hospital and actually the site had not yet been fully cleared and it really was the very beginning of that process. Even though I was not as an employee being able to sit in on all the discussions, we sort of watched it from afar in terms of when the construction was going to start and when the crops were no longer being grown on this property and it was starting to be prepared for the construction. It really started just about the same time so we are talking January of 1975 and we actually moved in the Spring of 1977 so most of the political decisions had been done by then but the actual process of getting the agreement revising some of the plans because by then the State had become a partner with the medical school and it actually did have some impact on the changes for the County. The County was originally planning on relocating here with about a 360-bed hospital. Remember they had not planned for instance for the Neonatal Unit or the teaching addition that now actually is the front side of this facility. None of that was in the original plans and yet when we actually moved into this building in the spring of 1977 we immediately started the construction of the Neonatal Unit so a lot of the changes in the process and the design actually were happening right within that window of time. Of course, I was so far removed from it I didn't have a clue, all I knew was I was coming to work, I was going to be here for four years while I finished my undergraduate degree and yes they would have a nice new hospital but frankly at that time I had no idea, I don't think anybody had any idea of what was going to happen. You know, I think even the community, I can remember sitting in college in classes and certainly the folks at the University, the students at that time and the community I don't think really had a real appreciation for what had been decided. They knew the fight was hard to get the medical school here and would hear those little rumblings around the campus at that time or in the employee lounges which was basically the place you worked as there really were not employee lounges, but people really didn't have any idea. I think they knew they were going to get a nice new hospital, we may be getting a few services we wouldn't have had otherwise in Pitt County, but there really was not, I don't believe, an appreciation at that time for what we have now subsequently become in terms of the health care delivery system and even some of the potential that most of believe still exists for really continuing to meet those health care needs in eastern North Carolina. Frankly, even the day we moved into this building and we were immediately in another construction project. There was no clue except in, I believe, a few individuals who were very visionary at that time both within the Executive Staff and the Medical School and certainly some of our Board leaders and we have worked with some fine Board leaders over the years. There just really wasn't an understanding. I can remember moving into this building-I by then was working in a support position in the Administrative Suite and that is actually the position I moved over with, and we moved thirty days before the building was ready. We had no air conditioning, this was in early April so we had fans with the doors propped open and we were still finding snakes in the OR and those kinds of things. You have to understand it was not a secured construction site by then and so we were going through all of those difficult times. We were faced unfortunately with a situation that because of some of the facility deficits in the old hospital we came very close to not securing our Joint Commission Accreditation and in fact, Jack Richardson and some of our medical staff leaders actually had to get on a plane with boxes of documentation to prove that we were in fact building a new facility to keep us accredited because we did not meet some of the safety code issues in that prior to moving into the new facility. We came real close unfortunately to jeopardizing our Joint Commission Accreditation which you cannot do with a County hospital. You cannot receive your Medicare reimbursement.

We moved into this building, the Administrative Staff, thirty days ahead of time. We were trying to make sure we met the deadline. We had to get out of the old facility and we faced the Joint Commission review process thirty days after we moved into this facility. We didn't have money for new equipment. We were literally painting equipment coming off the back loading dock of the old hospital, painting it and moving it into this facility. We were moving things in people's cars, we had reservists who literally were bringing their equipment and trucks and helping us to move equipment to try to get us into this facility and we literally were sitting in a new facility within thirty days with a Joint Commission team. When we talk about all the concerns of having three years to get ready and all the anxiety that creates, we literally had no choice because we basically were under a conditional approval. It wasn't called that at that time but that is basically what it was because the facilities we were in were not appropriate to be taking care of the patients at that time and we had to get out of the facility and into the new facility. People were working around the clock. Fortunately we came through with flying colors as we have in every year since but it was an extremely difficult time and we moved and our budget went from about $5 million to $11 million the first year but money was tight. We could not buy new equipment; we were doing everything we could just to get operational. We had folks at that time like Mr. Leslie who was at that time I guess the Plant Manager at what, of course, was Burroughs Wellcome at the time and we literally had to make decisions on a daily basis of whether or not we could pay our bills and that was one of those new roles that I got to do was I got to take checks manually on a daily basis to the Board Chairman who was Mr. Leslie when a determination was made that we had enough cash in the bank to pay bills. We had to pay bills for several years to get on our feet. It is pretty phenomenal to look back now and remember that and just remember by then nobody had heard of rehab services. We had one PT in the basement of the old building. Nobody had heard about rehab services. We were trying to bring up a number of new needed services and facilities and starting to look at some equipment needs. We were in an environment that there was not money to do it but there were a lot of folks who were determined and I think that was basically why we have been successful.

Beth Nelson: I guess your experience with not knowing day to day whether we were going to have the funds to pay our bills gave you a unique perspective on the same type of thing today, holding back on capital needs, certainly in a bigger picture with larger sums of money, talk a little bit about that.

Deborah Davis: It is interesting, somebody was asking the other day when I was interviewing a candidate for the trauma physician position and of course it came up as why do you think in this day in time this hospital and this health care system has been so successful and I talked about the old days and having to learn the hard way to manage your cash flow and even though we are now a major academic medical center we have not always been such and we have had to position ourselves in a way that while we always focus on mission and that has always been the driving force, I think we have done it in an environment that we have always had some business astuteness; we have never let the business side dictate the quality of the patient care, in fact, most of us truly believe that by always sticking to the mission and always saying quality is the first prerogative, the business then follows that process. It still doesn't lessen the lessons that we learned from the Jack Richardsons of the world; if we don't have the money, the capital requests go in the bottom drawer and they sit there frankly until you have the money to pay the bills and we used to pick on him about how he did cash flow in those days because now we have folks like Jack Holsten and a whole division of folks who are experts in that area. In those days we didn't have any of that. We had Buck Sitterson with his old calculator and Jack Richardson who basically said if we don't have the money it goes in the bottom drawer and it will wait until we can get to it. Really the mentality of we need to pay as we go, we don't need to go out there and put this facility or the County in a financial risk, we have got to build this foundation on very sound business principles and so a lot of those lessons were learned the hard way and fortunately we had folks like Mr. Leslie and Reid Hooper and Kenneth Dews, who could really bring their business sense to play in terms of how those decisions got made. Remember we had that ugly green plastic furniture in the front lobby and I made the mistake one day of commenting on it and was told that Jack Richardson personally picked that out and I haven't lived that one down yet but still we had to do a lot of things in the early days simply to get us operational and to really start taking care of the patients with most of Pitt County and the regional needs and staff still by then were doing double duty. We had a lot of folks who are still helping in the system. We were just then beginning to start our Radiology Program with Sandra Harrison and her expertise and she can tell you wonderful stories and the George Williams, John Stallings and Bill Youngs of the world in terms of respiratory therapy was a pretty new modality when I first came and really starting to overlay some of those resources so that the people in eastern North Carolina would get their health care needs from that. It has been a phenomenal ride.

Beth Nelson: I want to pick back up on your background, you went to school full time in order to graduate with a degree. Talk about graduating with your degree and not too long after that I guess you began pursuing your MBA. You certainly had an unusual degree for preparation for a health care career.

Deborah Davis: It basically didn't exist in health care at that time. I finished my undergraduate degree and as I said by then I actually was working. We were structured very differently then in the office with Jack Richardson and Rick Gilstrap who then was the Chief Operating Officer and Warren McRoy who was the Finance Officer, the first I think that we had ever had although Buck claims he was the first-that was really not his preparation or training and the nursing officer, Jean Owens, were all in the same suite and then there were several of us who were support staff who did things like listing every check that came into the hospital and made the bank deposits every day. A lot of those functions were housed in the Administrative Suite. I actually finished my degree in 1979, my undergraduate degree, and by then Dave McRae had actually come within about six months of my coming to the hospital and he was recruited to start the rehab services program because the $9 million bond referendum actually built the core hospital which is hard to believe in this day and time but it actually built the core 360 bed hospital. There was a $2 million grant that came through Vocational Rehab that actually built the Rehab Center at the same time and so Dave had actually come to start that process and about that time he began looking for somebody to assist him in the operations of the Rehabilitation Center and it just so happened that things came together. I had finished my undergraduate degree and Dave asked if I would go and work for him in the Rehab Center and actually part of the initial charge I was given was that the Rehab Center was preparing for its first major accreditation which was by CARF, Commission for Accreditation of Rehab Facilities, and so my first charge for Dave was to come and work for him and make sure that the facility was ready to go through that accreditation process which took us about a year to get ready for. Again, the hospital and Dave were willing to support me while I went back immediately and began my graduate studies and actually again went to school full time and worked full time to complete my Masters in Business Administration. Again, thinking I would go to work for Dave for three or four years and finish my MBA which is a very long program and I would still go out into the business world. You have to understand that in the seventies other than in Nursing, there were no female executives in health care. There were clearly no MBA trained individuals and I knew from very early on that I wanted to be in a leadership role and so I really was sort of planning my life in stages of three to five years at that point so I told Dave sure that I would come and do that and that it was an area of interest and that I had a lot of organizational skills and I would be happy to lend that and again would go and do it for three or four years and finish the next phase of the education.

Dave just permitted me to grow in a lot of professional ways in terms of his management style and mentoring and letting me finish my education and yet contribute in the ways that I could bring some skill and expertise. As a part of that, he personally has a lot of focus on diversity in terms of not whether you are male or female but age diversity and educational preparation diversity and how you go through the process of making decisions, making sure that you are encompassing a broader perspective and so I assisted him in that role and we had some excellent managers within the Rehab Division at that time and again it was like a small family and a lot of support and people just stepped in and did whatever had to be done and people didn't even know what rehab services were. We talked about the community not understanding the medical school, well even our medical staff didn't understand what rehab services were and we used to go and ask them why didn't they send patients to the rehab center and to look at what could be done for patients and types of things we can do to promote not only taking care of the acute episode, but in terms of restoring some of the quality of life and it was amazing to me that even within our facility there was still a lack of understanding of what was happening in terms of the development of expertise and resources and staff who were experts in the area of speech, audiology and physical therapy services now were developing and starting to take care of children and things that just weren't heard of in that day in time and stepping out and providing leadership. We were doing things that were not being done at other major teaching hospitals in the State at that time and because we felt like we had specific needs for our patients and if people were willing to step out and do that and again creating that atmosphere of learning and if nothing else, the one thing I have learned is we do, I believe, try to create an atmosphere of continuous learning both in terms of our personal lives but also in terms of our professional lives in what we bring to this organization. That was when the old joke of the days of the use of the high tech flip charts, that was how we communicated, how we started organizing, how we started just making decisions was with a flip chart and how that got translated into meetings and secure participation. Folks actually were willing to share ideas versus a top-down driven process which I don't feel we have ever been in that mode.

Beth Nelson: I am going back to the Rehab story. One thing Dave as he read the manuscript for the book, one thing he felt was missing and Dr. Monroe had the same thought, was the story of the Rehab Center and why it came here and apparently there was quite a brouhaha on the decision to locate it here and some of that probably occurred before you joined the hospital or maybe in the early days you were here but I know you would know the background. Just for the record and for a number of things, give me some of that history.

Deborah Davis: Actually there was what was called the "Blue Book", and it is still to this day referred to as the "Blue Book" which was the planning document for the development of Rehab services in the State of North Carolina and in fact, Dr. Ed Monroe served on the Commission or Task Force that developed this Blue Book. I am not sure which it was called. The concept was and again you have to understand that Rehab was a fairly new discipline and it really came out of the need to rehabilitate soldiers coming out of World War II and that is really how the whole discipline developed and there was a clear understanding in the early seventies and I think the Blue Book was probably done from 1969 to 1971, somewhere in that timeframe. The concept was that in the State of North Carolina there needed to be rehabilitation services developed in a way that promoted a regional concept. While there was an understanding you needed to get them close to the patients, there was also a realization that there was really not the expertise and the disciplines which was still a fairly young and developing area be it in speech, audiology, or physical therapy. Occupational therapy was a very new intervention. Recreational therapy in terms of looking at the whole patient and the services it provided. So what happened was this Task Force or Commission was developed and they laid out a plan of regionalizing rehab centers and recall that it happened prior to the decision being made about locating the medical school here. What was in Greenville was East Carolina University which was already here and there was already a School of Nursing and a School of Allied Health. The School of Allied Health was actually from my understanding the determining factor of why the rehab center for this region wound up in Greenville because there was an understanding and you have to understand that Dr. Monroe was connected with the School of Allied Health so there were a lot of connections here but there was clearly an understanding that to be able to train these professionals and these different disciplines to really apply rehabilitation techniques you had to have a labor market to be able to do that. So, those decisions were actually done very early on in concert with the decisions about building a new hospital and by then the decision had been made about the two-year medical program but not about the full-grown program later. All those pieces were like putting together parts of a puzzle. It is interesting at that time because Chapel Hill had a very small program and to this day still has a relatively small program in comparison to what we are doing in Greenville. The Charlotte program was up and operational and which actually was the leader in the State for the entire decades of the seventies and early eighties and at that time I don't believe there were any rehab trained physicians in the State of North Carolina. So, this was a huge step and even early on when we did the Strategic Plan, we had done strategic planning for decades which is hard to believe because a lot of health care systems have only recently decided that strategic planning is a good thing, there was actually a long range plan done in 1979 for this health center and the rehab component was done as a part of that process. We used to talk about things like we were going to train residents in physical medicine and rehabilitation which was not being done but in one other place in the entire Southeastern United States. We used to have those conversations with Dr. Bill Laupus about that this was really something the School of Medicine ought to take on. It could become a major leader in training family medicine and rehabilitation physicians and Dave, of course, coming out of his background was a very strong advocate and the pieces came together. Vocational Rehabilitation Services agreed to fund the $2 million to build the original center. The School of Allied Health agreed to start training the practitioners that we needed. There were frankly not a whole lot of people really paying attention at the time because most folks didn't understand or have any idea of how important rehab would become as it has in the last decade and the pieces came together and Dave was hired and charged with making it happen. He sure did obviously.

Beth Nelson: I want to make sure I got some things correct. This was a shock to me that rehab services grew out of the need to rehabilitate soldiers after World War II.

Deborah Davis: I believe it was out of World War II. This started with the soldiers coming back frankly with missing limbs; they were living through those experiences but coming back with disabling conditions and there was a need to figure out ways both through the development of orthotic and prosthetic devices and then retraining which is really how the discipline developed.

Beth Nelson: Also you mentioned a Long-Range Plan in 1979 which addressed the need to find a way to start training physiatrists. Apparently there were other communities that were vying for this and somebody mentioned that Goldsboro was interested.

Deborah Davis: Goldsboro, Kinston, and I think there were several others that were actually larger communities at that time who felt that they deserved to have some of the specialty health services. The dynamics of the seventies were very different in terms of eastern North Carolina and Kinston, Rocky Mount and Goldsboro were applying at that time. A number of those were actually put on the table and looked at. Really what Greenville brought was the School of Allied Health at East Carolina University. That was really the determining factor. At least that is what I have been told. Ed Monroe was there so he could speak to that probably more than I but that certainly has been the legend since then that it is what happened.

Beth Nelson: I wonder if there was some "horsetrading" that was involved in it from a political standpoint that you might have heard. Some folklore over the years past, but I am wondering. When I interviewed Ed Monroe about six months ago somehow the story of the rehab fight never came up. Do you remember hearing if there was any of the kind of thing like what we went through with getting the School of Medicine here and some of those kinds of things, the stuff of legends that kind of add to the fabric of this place?

Deborah Davis: I am sure there were. I mean there were a lot of rumors at that time, you might remember that jets were flying into Kinston at that time and not into Greenville. I think there were issues raised about Greenville getting its fair share because there were a lot of people who felt that the development of the airport at that time in Kinston was really the regional hub. You could go there and get on a jet and fly basically non-stop wherever you wanted to go in the eastern part of the United States. So, I think there were a lot of discussions around fairness issues in terms of supporting economic development in eastern North Carolina and there were a lot of things in terms of Rocky Mount and what it was getting around some industry support, which it still has a very strong industry base, and there was a lot of people who believed very early on that what Greenville would bring to the table was the hub of the health care service delivery and that as we were moving forward that those services as they developed needed to come to Greenville. That the academic community was here and that there was a very strong private practice community that could support those efforts and that if these other types of infrastructure issues were going to other parts of eastern North Carolina that those things related to health care ought to come to Greenville. So, there are a lot of stories about how some of that occurred that are out there and how much of that is true and how much of that was simply how you explained away things and why certain people got certain types of things that were supported at the State level is probably anybody's guess but I suspect some of that did happen. It's hard to believe that anything happened that didn't have some trade off.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk about significant events that would have occurred in your years here. Things like the move to the new hospital which you have alluded to, Is there anything that comes to your mind that you would like to share or somebody, an employee or someone who, not by name, but people who went to extraordinary lengths to provide service here? Some of the hero type people that you can recapture.

Deborah Davis: I'm glad you don't want me to name people because there are so many over the years. I think people don't realize that in eastern North Carolina in this health care system unfortunately we have had a lot of disasters of different scales and everything from when the tornadoes came through the Winterville area and just the devastation of that and then the apartment complex blew up back several years ago, the chemical plant and the hurricanes. I can remember many times when I was in a very different role just watching how staff interacted. I can remember times of when the tornadoes came through and we had almost 600 people in the cafeteria and we had 150 people who came through our Emergency Department and we literally had a situation that we couldn't find people. We didn't know where they were, which community hospitals they had been taken to. It is the only time that I can remember that we actually had to set up a temporary morgue because we just had no idea what we were dealing with. I can remember social workers and nursing staff and leaders who just stepped up time and time again and of all the things I remember it was watching how our staff related to those families in the most humanistic way in terms of talking with them and trying to help find their loved ones and in some cases, unfortunately, having to take them to this temporary morgue to identify family members and just the emotion, the interaction and the understanding that had things been different it could have been their family member or their neighbor and they were their neighbors and just watching it in these crisis situations how our staff and others just stepped up and the community have stepped up. I remember the outpouring when the Eastcare helicopter went down. We had to give back to the community, we had to get here and we had to take care of folks in the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all the other things over the years and the snowstorms and our physicians who actually got on cross country skis to come in to take care of patients because there was no other way to get here and Jack Richardson getting one of the machines that cleared the road-he literally rode in on one of those-it was the only way to get here. I think when the Eastcare helicopter went down it was really a chance for the community to give back to this hospital and when we had the memorial services and had the church full and people in the community waiting out in streets just to hear the ceremony and I remember being in the Board discussion about actually shutting that service back down and the fact of whether or not we were willing to take that risk and put that service back in operation. The outpouring from the community of what a waste of life it would have been to shut that down-people who dedicated their lives to bringing that service up and wanting it. I think that was the turning point for a lot of us who thought that we really might go on in our careers and do different things. I think it was the coming together at that point of this hospital and its employees and the medical staff. I think we always have given to our patients but I think that was the one time that the community really stood up as a whole, especially with all the tough things we have been through in the last couple of years. I sort of look back and say that this really is a commitment and when the going really gets tough and you get through all of the stuff, it really was a true commitment to providing those services that are needed and that is what I talk about when I talk to those folks we are recruiting for trauma. There is a lot of strictly being that business but there is also a strong sense of mission and if we don't do it, who else is going to do it. If we are going to do it, we are going to do it right and that takes talent, it takes resources, it takes people just being committed to doing that and facing those barriers and just saying they are not going to stop us and I think that's the attitude you have seen coming out of this place for the last two decades and I think we will continue in the future.

Beth Nelson: I don't know if you will remember but one of the quotes from Jack Richardson that I remember so vividly was when the final decision was made to continue the helicopter service, he said if we have a fire and a certain department burned down, you need to rebuild it and Eastcare was a part of our hospital and we are going to rebuild it. I just thought that was a very tough decision from him because there were some very loud Board members who were talking to him on a regular basis about getting out of the business all-together.

Deborah Davis: Yes, there was a lot of concern. Those were very, very tough discussions but I think in the end we clearly made the right decision. I think that is culminated by the fact that Eastcare has just been chosen as the best program for air medical transport in the entire United States and will be recognized in October in Salt Lake City and when I think back to where we started, some of the real hurdles that had to be overcome and the dedication of folks to making that happen, and where we have come to, in what most people would consider to be a relatively short period of time. I think about and it is hard for me to believe that I have been here almost twenty-six years, I mean it is just amazing to me and yet I have been a whole lot of different places in that period of time because of what we have seen happen and the growth and just the ongoing dedication of excellence that every single person has had and continues to have and it is just phenomenal to me. \

Beth Nelson: Did you say Eastcare was chosen as the best air medical program in the United States?

Deborah Davis: This award will actually be presented at a black tie affair in Salt Lake City.

Deborah Davis: Well, actually I flew in the helicopter but I actually got here but I could not get here for the first couple of days. Actually it is sort of a joke now because in all these years I have always been one of the ones on the Executive Staff who stayed in-house but this time Jim said to go home as we will need some reserves after the storm blows through and we will get you here the next day or so. Well, I actually live in Tarboro and I couldn't get out. There were no exits at all so I actually did not get here until Saturday morning. It took 2-1/2 hours to get here from Tarboro and my husband immediately turned around and drove back and it took 3-1/2 to get back because remember by Saturday morning the flood waters were still expounding in the region because the flood waters didn't really start until Friday morning. The hurricanes came through Thursday morning and we took all the tree damage and by Thursday afternoon it was nice and sunny and people were out trying to clean up. Everybody expected to get to work on Friday morning and starting about 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning they started evacuations and the military helicopter started coming over trying to get folks particularly out of the Princeville area and so we got a call at 2:00 a.m. Friday morning from some of the folks we know who were being evacuated and so there was no way to get out on Friday but by Saturday morning we were able to get here and then I stayed in-house for the next seven days so that we could get some other folks out. It is the first time in all these years that I wasn't the one on site and then it became ironic and I couldn't get here so in some ways I think it is worse being on the other side not knowing what was going on. Fortunately I was in telephone contact just about the whole time and that helped.

I suppose you have had others to talk about the hurricane/flood and what happened. It was really the first disaster we have gone through as a System of health care delivery and again the phenomenal efforts that were made to take care of patients because we still had a lot of patients. We still were very, very busy going into that event and then subsequent to it so we had a lot of patients in-house, not only here but also in our other hospitals.

Beth Nelson: Do you have any vignettes or thoughts that you recall from that event, individuals who did extraordinary things at that time?

Deborah Davis: I remember actually just the relief when we finally got coffee. We actually had gone for several days without being able to provide any coffee because all the major huge coffee systems down in the cafeteria are directly tied into our water system and of course we lost all of that. I remember of all the things people were saying they are working hard and not getting any sleep but they had to have some coffee. They could live without a whole lot of things but they wanted some coffee.

I can remember the Dietary Staff getting creative and mixing coffee in these huge vats and the relief on people's faces when they just got a cup of coffee. It is amazing how simple things in a crisis it is just that one thing you sort of hold on to and that is your comfort level and I remember some of the staff's faces as we were able to get them coffee for the first time in several days. Making rounds where we were taking care of some of the folks from the community who special needs and just had what looked like mass confusion because there were a lot of patients who had come into our facility because they were on oxygen or they needed other resources and they were just afraid to stay in their homes and their families and all their belongings in this huge sense of community of folks trying to help one another and the staff taking care of those individuals. It just goes on and on. We delivered a lot of candy through this and a lot of folks just came in just to deliver things to the floors because we couldn't get people freed up because we were working staff in shifts and just some of the relief there just in terms of just a nice kind word and it is amazing what a little bit of chocolate can do to revive people. All of us won't forget the helicopter rides and watching folks who had never been on an airplane in some cases let alone a helicopter still shaking as they were getting off of the helicopters and they said they needed to be here and they got here. Very few people will tell you what they personally had gone through which was real interesting to me. It was usually other staff members who would mention as we would go around and talk with folks and make rounds and it was kind of strange in the way that it happened. I remember going up to one of the nursing units and the story that got related at that time was of a fellow nurse who literally came out of their home in chest-deep water, who had put their dog on a flotation device to get their dog out of the home, and had a backpack and the only thing they really brought other than the toothbrush kind of scenario was their nursing uniform so they could go to work. That person was in the building working. I mean those were the kinds of stories but it was almost always the colleagues who were telling me those stories. It wasn't the individuals. The individuals were saying they were here and they were going to take care of patients and that's what they needed to do. We had a lot of employees who they themselves wound up in shelters and we were getting calls from those folks in the Command Center and it wasn't a matter of "poor me-I just lost my home" it was that they needed medical supplies as there were people who were sick in the shelters and if we could get them some stuff they were going to take care of those people. It was just amazing, that was the norm, it wasn't the unusual which is so hard when you ask people to tell the story of what happened during the hurricane, I mean that was the norm.

Beth Nelson: I guess people were more focused on the needs of others at that time.
I do want to touch on individuals who you think of over the years.

Deborah Davis: There are lots of folks. Clearly people like Betty Bailey, I think of folks like Margie Coburn who was in the Business Office downstairs who really ran the Admissions and Business Office components. Folks like the nursing coordinators in the old hospital. Jean Owens first joined us and I am going blank on names. Jean was actually here when I first came. The nursing coordinators went down to the pharmacy at night to get drugs to take to the nursing floors because there was nobody else to do it. Folks like that just looking back are really the ones who stepped up and did things. The Sandra Haislips of the world who literally did all the accounts payable for many, many years. She is somebody who has been in our system for many years and has really seen the transformation of our business operations from basically a system of using the old calculator that Buck had the only one of to some very sophisticated systems. She is involved in developing the business side of the house. There are just many people. Dr. Wilkerson who was the Chief of Staff from Family Medicine. He really was an old time family practitioner before being in family practice was really very glitzy like it is these days-I'm not sure everybody would agree with that but it is much glitzier than it was in the days that he was doing that. Jack Welch in the OR and the staff and Phyllis who now is an occupational health nurse was here early days in the OR when we were just beginning to install some higher technology and monitoring type of capabilities. There are just so many people. Ralph Hall and folks in terms of - I was looking the other day and there are actually letters that went to Ralph back in 1971 and 1972 when he was actually doing some of the work in Kinston starting to ask about equipment and what kinds of things people needed to be thinking about as they were starting to talk about building a new hospital in Greenville.

There are lots and lots of staff like Henry Guyette, Jim Maira. Henry was actually the first physical therapy person we had. Dave will remember him as he was actually on board before Jim Maira came on board. We talk about folks like Jim Maira who literally started an entire service area that was not there previously. Some of our social work staff -we had no social workers prior to moving into this facility in 1977 which is unimaginable at this point in time in terms of the discharge planning functions and trying to fulfill those other needs. There are Board members like Noel Lee who pushed us and pushed us to look at developing a chaplaincy service at a time when most people said you can't do that as it was not separation of Church and State and you cannot do that in a hospital setting. Yet, we had Board leadership who said this was important in terms of taking care of the whole patient. It just goes on and on in terms of people who have stepped up. Folks like Kathryn Lewis who served in the early days and kept us even early on focused on patient satisfaction and patient care issues and who has been willing after many years to come back on to our Board. There are just lots and lots of folks.

Beth Nelson: I was thinking of key leadership people like Kathryn Lewis. If you had to look back over your years here.

Deborah Davis: Clearly Reid Hooper, Mamie Smith from the early days who really stepped out. Folks in the community who were supportive early on through the Chamber such as Ed Walker, Ron Thiel who became the Dean of the School of Allied Health, Judy Kuykendall, who is just this year retired from Pitt Community who was willing to take some risk and start some allied health training programs over the last several years and really go to bat for us to be able to develop training programs so we could train some of the emerging subspecialists that we have in terms of some of our technology areas particularly. Brenda Phillips and Wanda Nunn who were there very early on. Sandy Hall was probably the first director of nursing for the Rehab Center when it opened.