Wade Hunt has taken the helm as president of MultiCare Deaconess and Valley hospitals, succeeding Greg Repetti, who retired in October. 

Hunt has over 17 years of experience in health care administration gained through several leadership roles across the globe. He started his career as the director of operations for Mission Hospital, in Mission Viejo, California, then spent nearly five years in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, leading a consulting team that worked alongside ministries of health to provide better care for citizens.

In 2016, he became the chief operating officer for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, in Vancouver, Washington. He joined MultiCare the following year as Deaconess Hospital’s chief operating officer. In 2022, he was appointed president of MultiCare Pulse Heart Institute, where he led growth and expansion efforts into Oregon. 

Hunt, 47, has a bachelor's in English from the University of Utah, and a master’s in health care administration from Saint Louis University. 

The Journal met with Hunt in his first weeks in his new role to discuss what led him to health care administration, who his mentors are, and what he hopes to accomplish in this new role. 

How did you decide to go into health care administration with an English degree? 

When I was an undergrad, I had a job in which I led group homes for people with disabilities. We did everything from daily assistance living to taking them to doctors' appointments. It was a really great experience helping and seeing vulnerable people in the community find success. 

I graduated with an English degree and became a stockbroker, but I knew I would need to go back to school.

I knew I didn't want to stay as a stockbroker, so I started making cold calls. One call was to someone who had just finished grad school and was working at the Mayo Clinic, and others were to hospital executives to ask them what they did in their job. They were gracious to give me half an hour of their time, and that’s when I decided I wanted to pivot. I got a degree in health care administration, and it was a great decision for me and my family, and I haven’t looked back. 

What do you hope to accomplish in this role? 

There are primarily three different areas of opportunity that we have. One is that we need to be financially viable, which allows us to better serve the community and provide more services, like growing our behavioral health program.  

Some of our financial challenges were due to staffing. The fact of the matter is that the pandemic caused a lot of late-career nurses to retire and required us to bring in a lot of travel nurses at a premium. So we really want to build a place where people want to come, whether it is the start, mid, or end of their career, and want to be part of this team and this community. Keeping people here means giving them a great experience when they come to provide care and providing our leaders with the resources to engage those teams differently. 

And the third area that you want to focus on? 

The third area of focus is to grow the accessibility of our hospitals to make it easy to do business here. For example, it means making it easier for physicians in the community to transfer their patients to our hospitals, as well as critical-access hospitals. That access is a key component in ensuring that others have the ability to send their patients to a higher level of care. 

Who has been your mentor, and what have they taught you about leadership?

Markie Callie. She was phenomenal. She was the chief operating officer at my first post in California. Unfortunately, she passed away two years ago from pancreatic cancer. She was everything you want out of a leader: open, kind, gave guidance when needed. She’s the one that encouraged me to go to the Middle East and have that experience, and that meant I was leaving her. I would talk to her if not quarterly, every other month. We talked quite a bit; she was just available. 

I’ve taken after her example. Having availability and presence and showing up are things I’ve learned from her. I think about her a lot. I try to give back to young health care professionals and anyone who is coming in the same (care) she gave me. There are so many opportunities in health care, from nursing to registration personnel. Like I said before, people opened their doors to me to ask questions about what they did in their job, and I want to be that for people who are exploring where they are.