Kevin Spiegel does, in fact, have a rear-view mirror on his car.
I know. I specifically asked him, just to make sure.
The proposed Erlanger Behavioral Health Center is seen in this rendering by Stengel-Hill Artchitecture.
Jay GreesonAnd when he uses the mirror, it's about the only time Spiegel, the 60-year-old executive who has been at the helm of Erlanger Health System during its three-year turnaround, looks backward.
Simply put, there's too much in front of him.
"Don't have time to look behind us," Spiegel said late last month. "We've got too much happening here to worry about that."
After receiving state approval Wednesday to build an 88-bed psychiatric and alcohol and drug treatment facility near its downtown campus, the immediate future is filled with massive eight- and nine-figure projects that continue to reshape and rejuvenate Chattanooga's public hospital and the nation's seventh largest public health system.
The 9-0 vote from the state board gave Spiegel and Co. the go-ahead on a state-of-the-art facility that will help our city address the ever-growing number of people diagnosed with mental illness.
So if you are keeping score at home, Erlanger in the next 14-plus months is scheduled to break ground on the new hospital, unveil the expansion at Erlanger East, break ground on Children's Ambulatory Center and start the $100 million Epic Electronic Health Records overhaul.
Epic "is state-of-the-art technology and something that really will help our doctors, nurses and most importantly our patients," he said.
If it feels like a lot, well, that's because it is. On one of the walls in Spiegel's office is a flow chart with pictures of the physicians, doctors in training and fellows advancing their skills here.
Across the room is a hard hat, needed to navigate the construction zones at the main facility that has seen record-setting growth under Spiegel's aggressive leadership.
Spiegel knows every step to this point has not been easy.
"We could have had much better communication that first year," he said. "We had to make a lot of tough choices - some choices that had not been made here before - and there were some times I think that the message and the situation could have been a little more clear."
Those tough choices salvaged our city's medical Titanic, steering away from the iceberg that loomed - Erlanger was operating at a deficit in the tens of millions of dollars not that many years ago - and into the open water of expansion.
And not unlike the universal maxim of "publish or perish," the world in large-scale health care could be read as "expansion or extinction."
Yes, the first concern for those doctors, nurses and therapists when we need them most is to save lives.
But if Spiegel and his leadership team had not tightened the belt and made those tough decisions, who knows where Erlanger would be this morning?
Would it be facing the same fate as Hutcheson, a facility that was run into the ground despite being staffed with talented health care professionals who loved their jobs and their patients?
Spiegel was open about Erlanger's need to improve customer satisfaction, something he hopes will be addressed with updated rooms and bathrooms, a new cafeteria and the Epic records overhaul.
But for a guy whose two favorite words are "huge" and "awesome," talking about problems or issues quickly gives way to suggestions and often solutions.
Across-the-board increases in almost every category have allowed Erlanger's 2017 budget to peel off $3 million in salary adjustments for bedside nurses and to add more than 140 new jobs.
It's amazing, really, what has happened and what is on the horizon.
And for those who wonder how long Erlanger can keep the well-respected Spiegel, well, he said last month he plans on retiring here.
Besides, it's not like he has that much time to interview anywhere anyway.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and 423-757-6343. His "Right to the Point" columns runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.