July 27, 2007
Building a Healthier Quad Cities
Genesis V.P. of Support Services retires after nearly 40 years
DAVENPORT, IOWA - Ron Reinders points to an old photo of what the former St. Luke’s Hospital looked like when he landed a job there nearly 40 years ago.
“Of course, it was much smaller then,” Reinders says like a father showing a childhood photo of his grown-up child. “It was a hospital of about 240 beds, immediately and completely surrounded by residential houses and parking.
“There were no Medical Office Buildings 1 and 2, no Medic EMS building, no South or North parking garages, no skywalks and no Genesis Heart Institute.”
The photo of what is today a very different looking East Rusholme Street campus of Genesis Medical Center is of particular significance to Reinders. He retires today as Vice President of Support Services for Genesis after leading more than $200 million in renovations and expansions since the ‘80s.
Unlike many people who retire, Reinders has the satisfaction of seeing his accomplishments captured in the bricks, mortar, steel and glass of countless construction projects. Quite literally, his career has been about building better health care for the region.
In his role, he also has overseen the support departments that are instrumental to the hospital, including engineering, maintenance, planning, construction, security, materials and food services.
“It has been a great place to work,” Reinders says. “Genesis has a great team. This job has been very good to me.”
A great career
It was 39 years and 5 months ago that Reinders, fresh from earning a finance degree at University of Iowa, arrived at St. Luke’s to begin work as a unit manager. He planned to stay in Davenport for only a year, while his wife, Joan, underwent an internship at Mercy Hospital for her medical technology degree. “We never left,” he says. “We loved the area. We raised three sons here, and the job opportunities at St. Luke’s kept opening.”
After serving several management positions, he was named a Vice President at St. Luke’s in 1978. Fifteen years later, he would be an integral part of the executive team that managed the consolidation of St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals to give birth to Genesis Health System in 1994.
“Non-stop” health care construction has spanned his career, he says. St. Luke’s built Medical Office Building 1 in 1982. That same year, Mercy built Pavilion 1. St. Luke’s built Medical Office Building 2 in 1987. Mercy built Pavilion 2 in 1987, he says.
Back then, now-Genesis CEO and President Leo Bressanelli was a vice president and assistant administrator to St. Luke’s Hospital leader James Stuhler and oversaw construction.
“As Leo got more involved in administration, I got more involved in construction and support services,” Reinders recalls.
Looking back, he admits it was an unlikely path for him to take. “I didn’t have a background in construction,” he adds. “I learned by doing.”
In the early ‘90s, when Mercy and St. Luke’s began building medical parks on Maplecrest Road and Devils Glen Road respectively, it became apparent that there were more efficient ways for the two hospitals to co-exist. “It was time to cooperate and bring our strengths together,” Reinders recalls.
Reinders was part of the executive team that managed the consolidation of St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals to create Genesis Health System. To follow, would be the region’s first bi-state health care affiliation with Illini Hospital in 1996 and an affiliation with DeWitt Community Hospital in 1997. The future would bring more building projects as the boundaries of Genesis Health System continued to grow.
“It was exciting, scary, unknown,” recalls Reinders of the early days after the consolidation. “We moved from being extremely competitive to uniting in a real team effort. We were suddenly on the same team with the same goals.”
More construction
Highlighting the years after consolidation would be the 1997 construction of a two-story atrium, an expanded outpatient care center, renovations to the Cancer Center and a new family medical center on the West Central Park campus. A major renovation and expansion of the DeWitt campus concluded in 2000.
Since then, the Genesis, Illini Campus has been transformed with a new BirthCenter, cafeteria, surgical area and renovated Larson Center. Joint partnerships with physicians have resulted in the Genesis Center for Digestive Health and the Crow Valley Orthopaedic Surgery centers in Bettendorf. Community partnerships also have brought the new Bettendorf Family YMCA and the Clarissa C. Cook Hospice House. In the future, a partnership with St. Ambrose University will bring a new health sciences building on the West Central Park campus – to name a few projects.
His career highpoint was the $65 million construction project that transformed the East Rusholme Street entrance with a glassy, three-story addition and expanded the campus with the building of a new Genesis Heart Institute, a new North Parking Ramp, a distinctive skywalk, a new Edgerton Women’s Health Center and renovations to various office building suites.
“I think the Heart Institute with its curved skywalk, the Adler Health Education Center and the parkway project really gave us the look of a larger teaching hospital,” Reinders says. “We receive many positive comments from physician recruits.”
The East campus hospital’s three-story addition also represents the most difficult challenge of his career. “We totally redid the hospital and kept it operating round-the-clock,” he says. “We didn’t lose patients or medical staff to the competition. That was tough.”
Setting up an inconspicuous construction zone in the middle of a hospital wasn’t easy, and Genesis’ unique approach earned national attention in the health care construction industry.
Instead of moving people and materials through the hospital elevators and corridors, workers climbed scaffolds and used temporary walkways on the roof of another section of the hospital to move materials in and out. All demolition went out the building through chutes.
Reinders has tremendous pride in the multi-department coordination at Genesis and the skills of Quad City laborers, who must undergo extensive hospital safety training before working at Genesis.
“The Quad City labor force is very good, and we’re very fortunate we don’t have to go outside the area,” he says.
Changing trends
Times have changed considerably since the day he first walked onto the job at St. Luke’s, he says. Building projects have changed as health care trends have changed.
“Patient stays are shorter; their expectations are higher; and their doctors want to be much more efficient,” he says. “Operating rooms are three times the size they once were to accommodate the technology. Nine new cath labs point to new minimally invasive advances in heart care. The expansion of our NICU later this year illustrates how we now care for more preemies, without transferring them out of the area.”
In addition to his service to Genesis, Reinders has served as chairman of the Davenport Ambulance Corp. and has been a member of board of directors and advisory councils for many community organizations, including the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce, River Music Experience, the Adler Center for the Performing Arts, Scott County Family YMCA and the Bettendorf Development Corp.
Immediately after retirement, Reinders looks forward to the birth of a grandchild, a son’s wedding in Malaysia, and traveling with his wife, Joan. The couple’s three sons hosted a 40th wedding anniversary celebration for them on Sunday.
Although he won’t miss budgets and deadlines, he will miss the excitement as Genesis looks to future expansion opportunities in the Illinois Quad Cities. A strategic facility plan also is underway to determine what the four hospital campuses will need in the next decade.
It’s proof that health care construction never retires, and he respectfully passes responsibility onto his successor and long-time colleague Mike Sharp, who has served as Assistant Vice President of Support Services since 2005.
“I’ll probably drive by all that Genesis construction and wave,” Reinders says. “In 39 years, I’ve really enjoyed it here. It has been a great place to work.”
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