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Thursday, May 15, 2008
One-On-One With Jim Hinton
By Autumn Gray
Assistant Business Editor
Jim Hinton has been giving people the unexpected since the day he was born.
“I have two older brothers. I was supposed to have been the sister. My mom really liked the name Barbara, so I would have been Babs,” he said, having fun at his own expense.
Hinton has just pulled from his minifridge two Diet Cokes — one for himself and one for a journalist — before sitting down at the conference table in his corner office at the Presbyterian Administrative Center near the airport. It’s doubtful many in the community have seen him without a suit and tie, and today is no different. But when Hinton flashes his smile and offers up that regular-guy persona, it’s easy to forget the 49-year-old is president and CEO of Presbyterian Healthcare Services, the largest health care provider in the state.
Q: Was this what you always wanted to do?
A: “I wanted a job where there was air conditioning,” he says jokingly of his boyhood dream career. “I mowed lawns in the summer and it was hot.
“No, I didn’t really have something that I wanted to do. I’ve always loved being outdoors and so I had that sort of, I-want-to-be-a-forest-ranger kind of thing going, not having any idea what a forest ranger does. I did have a job briefly at the Acoma Pet Center. Of course, what I thought the job was gonna be was petting dogs because I assumed they needed somebody to pet dogs. ... But the job was cleaning up after the dogs. And so I spent about three days ... and then I thought this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, so I left. I went to another job, I think working construction. I was 18 or 19.”
That was familiar territory. Despite what his Ivy League looks suggest, Hinton is a third-generation New Mexican, the product of what he calls a “lower-middle class” family. His father worked lumber and construction.
Hinton probably had the physique to follow in his dad’s footsteps. As a teen, he threw the shotput and discus and played football for the Highland High Hornets — “center, which is a very glamorous skill position. I touched the ball on every play and then gave it to somebody else who actually did something with it.”
These days, he’s the one often leading the team.
In addition to leading the charge at Presbyterian, where he has worked 25 years, Hinton has been chairman of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, chairman of the board and campaign chairman for United Way of New Mexico, and is now chairman-elect for the nonprofit microlender Acción New Mexico, to name a few.
Above all, he is passionate about using his position to make a difference.
Q: You have stated publicly that you favor universal health care coverage. Since the Legislature failed to act this session, what do you think is the next step toward improving health care in this state, where one in five residents is uninsured?
A: I think that universal coverage is probably best done at a national level, so that there is not competition among states. Given where we are with the presidential election, it probably makes sense for the state to wait and see what’s coming out of Washington. I think what gets lost in the debate on universal coverage is really two things: One is that people with insurance are healthier. They get the preventive care. The second issue is that we’re paying for people anyway. The estimates are that something around $2,000 out of every person’s premium goes to pay for people who don’t have health care. So, we’re already taxing ourselves to pay for it. Why not make it an official system?
Q: Insurance coverage aside, what is the greatest health care issue facing the state?
A: That’s a tough question because unfortunately New Mexico is on the wrong end of a lot of health status lists. We have to raise the economic standards in the state, and that will take care of a lot of the problems. Because if people get better jobs, they get better incomes, they can afford health insurance.
Q: You’re increasing Presbyterian’s technological capabilities. What does that entail and how does it help the patient?
A: A lot of what the technology is aimed to do is to eradicate this paper world that we live in, where it’s almost impossible to get the patient, the clinician and the information together. And we also know that paper kills. What we mean by that is these paper records are not always up to date, and the information may be illegible.
We have to catch up in health care to a more wired, real-time kind of environment. You can schedule your trip on Southwest Airlines at 3 a.m. with your hair messed up, in your boxer shorts, but you have to wait until 8 a.m. to call your doctor to see if you can get an appointment. What’s with that?
Q: Arguably, you are the face of New Mexico’s health care industry. How do you take care of yourself?
A: I have, probably like a lot of people, quite a few years of deferred exercise and diet built up in me that I probably need to do a better job of. I do try to get enough sleep. I need seven or eight hours of sleep a night. If I could eliminate those 2,000 calories that I eat between dinner and bedtime — you know, those Oreos, those darn Oreos.
Q: Several years ago, you rented a powder blue tux and a white ruffled shirt to wear to a Presbyterian fundraiser, and you are known for cracking jokes during speeches at business gatherings. Where does that side of you come from?
A: There’s a lot about the image that people have of the CEO that I just reject — like I don’t play golf. But when people hear that, they say, “You don’t play golf?!” I look at CEOs. I look at these very serious, self-important people, and I just don’t want to be that. The way our organization succeeds, and if I’m the happiest, is if the hierarchy is minimized except where you need it to create order. And everything else is the team working together. There’s days where the most important person at Presbyterian is Marty Archunde, who stands out here as the security guard and greets us all on the way in. And other days it’s Carl Lagerstrom who’s doing surgery on some little baby who has a heart defect.
So I guess I like to have fun, and I think it’s important to have fun at work. Work shouldn’t have to be work.
Basics: Born James Hall Hinton on Feb. 8, 1959, in Albuquerque; married to Carol for 25 years; one daughter, Rebecca, and a son, Robert; bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of New Mexico and master’s degree in health care administration from Arizona State University.
Position: President and CEO of Presbyterian Healthcare Services
What you didn’t know: He and some friends streaked through the Hiland Theater during a showing of “The Exorcist” when he was about 17. “We took our clothes off and we had a driver pull up in front of the Hiland Theater, and our friend working the front door opened the door for us, and so we streaked down the aisle” and in front of the screen.
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