Serving others is a way of life for Dave McRae.

More than anything else, service has set the tone of his administration. It's evident in the respectful way he speaks, in his ear for listening and in his commitment to the welfare of eastern North Carolina.

During 24 years with the hospital, McRae has moved among departments, assuming more leadership as the hospital grew. As president, he has kept the hospital moving forward while carefully attending to the present.

As the son of missionary parents - his father was a surgeon and his mother an educator - McRae learned the lessons that would guide his career. From the hardship of polio, contracted when he was a young child, he learned the discipline of meeting schedules, traveling for treatment and accepting his limits.

These elements combined with the dreams of an active mind led him to Greenville in 1976, where he became associate director for rehabilitation for a still-unbuilt center. For the next three years, he worked to obtain funding, staff and resources to promote the use of rehabilitation - a new concept to many doctors and patients at the time.

That kind of forward thinking brought him to his role as CEO and president of University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, an organization with more than 6,000 employees and $500-million in net revenues for 1999. It provides financial, technical and professional support to residents of the east through the Brody School of Medicine, Roanoke-Chowan Hospital, Chowan Hospital, Heritage Hospital, the Outer Banks Hospital (under construction) and Bertie Memorial Hospital, in addition to PCMH.

The sophistication and stability of the system and its components are among McRae's proudest achievements. Among those successes too is the dynamic relationship with the school of medicine, the result of shepherding the many needs of private and academic doctors and their patients.

During his tenure, he has seen the area emerge from a largely farming culture to become an outpost for academics, health care and commerce. "Despite great poverty, despite being in flood plan areas, there are many strengths here that need to be celebrated," he says. Among them are the hospital and medical school. "I am convinced that they have made a huge contribution."

As PCMH added more services, McRae developed new models to incorporate them into hospital operations. Shaping his decisions has been a tireless passion for improving the lives of others.

"I love the saying 'Bloom where you are planted.' I have always felt sense that I would do something that would give me a sense of unique purpose," he says. "I think you create opportunity wherever you are."

To his personal background of missionary life he brought ambition. "I wasn't supposed to be an eager, driven administrator back in those days," he says of his early career. "It took me a while to realize that in leadership, titles like administrator and boss give you the opportunity to serve in a different way."

When the Rehabilitation Center and hospital opened in the late 1970s, McRae began harvesting his first fruits - and learning his first lessons.

"I had to be very careful in those days not to act like they had to give me the money I needed for rehab," he remembers. "I tried to be sensitive in balancing and blending and being part of the hospital, as well as running the rehab center."

In further roles, he helped with business, personnel and community relations. Later, he supervised the operating room, radiology and other professional services. Soon, he was chief operating officer. As he advanced, he became a regular at board meetings.
"At every meeting they kidded me that I came in with flip charts, boxes and squares, that I was trying to organize them."

He agrees they had a point. "Everything I did had to be organized. I was looking to the future and planning ahead and I wore them out with that, but it was a natural instinct for me."

Those boxes, squares and flip charts helped usher in a new age. By the time McRae became hospital president in 1989, he conceived of a complex organization whose services could reach far into the rural areas of eastern North Carolina.

"I realized that I loved to assert my interest in creating, developing and doing good - in the sense of putting things together, managing, organizing and those kinds of things," he says. "I loved what we were doing here and it was a great challenge."

He has won supporters during difficult times, and attracted good leaders to his inner circle, people like Jim Ross, now president of PCMH, and Deborah Davis, senior vice president.

As he reflects on the shifting currents around him in health care, in Pitt County and in his own life - he continues to press forward. He wants to make sure the system has a strong board, financial integrity and a positive work environment for the doctors and other staff. The most compelling need is to convey the mission that is integral to the institution.

"Then I'll feel good about changing roles in my life," he says. "Because everything in life isn't built around work. This is such an all-consuming job, there is an eagerness that when I'm confident this place will go forward, I can create a new life to do things, whether in the church or in the community." He has a special interest in long-term health care of the elderly and of those with chronic illnesses.

Does he imagine a future as busy as his past?

Maybe.

"I have a love for working in complex environments, in setting a vision and fulfilling that vision," he says, adding, "There's a side of me that wants to relax and enjoy life, too."

Dave McRae