Executive Director of Business Development and Marketing, Delta Medical Center Memphis

As the executive director of business development and marketing at Delta Medical Center Memphis, Lynn Doyle likes to affect change. She is one of a handful of top administrators who provide vision and leadership to a type of hospital that’s become increasingly rare these days: one that is employee-owned. The professional staff at this 243-bed facility has a significant say in how Delta Medical is run, once they become vested in the hospital after five years of service. 

“When you’re small, you know everyone on the team. Employees are invested, since all full-time employees benefit once they’re vested. So the success of the hospital is good for them. And you’ll listen to suggestions no matter whether those ideas come from maintenance, nurses, or dietary. If it’s worth incorporating, we’ll do it,” said Doyle.

What Doyle likes about the hospital leadership is that it enables them to focus intently on customer service. In addition to offering routine medical care, the hospital has long provided psychiatric and substance abuse assistance. In fact, 90 beds there are designated for behavioral health. Today, they also focus more on senior care, and Doyle has been instrumental in shaping many of those programs.

Doyle earned her master’s degree in counseling from the University of Memphis in 1977 and after graduation, accepted a job in San Angelo, Texas. There she worked for the Mental Health Management company managing a 33-bed psychiatric unit at St. John’s Hospital. One year later, she came home for a visit and learned that a Memphis hospital was interested in launching a psychiatric unit as well. She was asked by the hospital to conduct a series of seminars on what the management of a unit like this looked like. She spoke with staff members, who had a variety of concerns about the hospital’s plans.

“I knew they were worried. I’m not sure about what — maybe that patients would run naked down the hall,” she said with a laugh. “I really didn’t know what to expect.” Instead, administrators listened intently and liked what they heard. They spoke with her further, sketching out their plans, and were impressed with the recommendations she made. Hospital leaders later contacted her about working with them to launch the new unit, but Doyle told them she would need some time to consider the move.

Then, administrators at Eastwood Hospital (Delta Medical’s name during the late 1970s) came back with a generous offer, asking Doyle what it would take to get her to move back to Memphis. They put together a compensation package, agreed to pay her moving expenses, and with her mother and brother anxious to have her back home, Doyle agreed to the deal.

That was 27 years ago. Today, Doyle is an integral part of this employee-run facility.

“Working here is like family to me. I do a little bit of everything. With a small hospital, your job is whatever you make it.” Flexibility and being tasked with a variety of responsibilities is what keeps the job fresh for Doyle.

One program she was responsible for launching is a course she calls “Hospitality.” It focuses on the importance of customer service, on every employee level regardless of how often employees come in contact with the patients. “The goal is to make sure that all hospital staff members know how to address patients properly,” she said. Once a month, a mix of new and veteran employees attend the three-hour class, which emphasizes the importance of quality care. It’s not just good business practice from a public relations standpoint, but Medicare also assesses hospital performance based on patient feedback. Reimbursement figures are then impacted by these reports.

The point of the hospitality course is to make customers feel as though staff members see them as more than just a patient. “It’s everything we want for ourselves when we’re on the other side of the desk,” said Doyle.

To ensure those classes are taken to heart, top administrators make daily rounds to speak with patients and family members to ask if their medical professionals are doing a good job to ensure that the patient’s stay is a good one. “If it’s not an answer we like, we get on it. But the compliments get passed along as well.

“We’re little fish in a big pond and we like that,” said Doyle. “Because the corporation is us; we can affect things and one way is to make sure people make the right decisions.”

Doyle was also instrumental in launching the hospital’s Senior Care Program. She keeps her finger on the pulse of the aging community by being involved in several aging associations, including the Professional Network on Aging, where she serves as president, and the Alzheimer’s and Creative Aging Mid-South Association, where she is a board member. Being involved with these organizations means she can be on the leading edge of aging trends, and stay abreast of the types of services available to seniors around the Mid-South.

Senior Care is aimed at providing assistance to those elderly patients who enter the hospital in need of assessment and stabilization. Often they’ve been living independently but experienced overriding issues that eventually begin to make them less adept at caring for themselves.

Patients receive comprehensive diagnostic care, which means receiving medical as well as behavioral assessments. Following that, they may be treated for issues that can include depression, anxiety, urinary tract infections (which can cause behavioral changes), dementia, congestive heart failure, or a host of other problems.

“One of the reasons we developed the Senior Care Program was because we had older people coming in with dementia. And (they often) can’t take care of their daily needs,” said Doyle. They would also treat patients who were on a variety of different medications, “so we had to fix the meds and figure out what the patients needs were. It further made sense to have a unit that treated people with similar ailments.” Senior Care is designed to help patients get back on their feet while adult children determine the best course of action for their loved ones.

In addition to caring for the elderly, the hospital also offers wellness programs to both patients and staff. An annual healthcare fair is made available to employees, giving them access to everything from blood pressure checks and counseling on nutrition to stress tests and B12 shots. There’s also a hypertension clinic, a chronic kidney disease clinic, and a sleep lab for patients.

The benefit of helping to manage a facility like Delta Medical is clear – with a leaner organization comes flexibility and the ability to better utilize the talent you’ve got.

“We never stop needing people to clap for us, and for us to clap for others,” said Doyle. “When you have that, you have life.”

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