Carol Sim, the CEO of Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation, is constantly scanning the horizon for health-care trends that intersect with the mission of her institution.
With a businesswoman’s eye for improving efficiency and a nurse’s heart for patients, the 59-year-old Cleveland, Ohio, native has just completed her second year at Siskin’s helm. Long-time Siskin Hospital CEO Bob Main, who had guided the hospital since its opening, stepped down in 2013.
Sim, a registered nurse before she became a health-care administrator in the early 1990s, says her priorities for Siskin include it being in the vanguard of neurological rehabilitation and research, adapting to new outcomes-based insurance reimbursement models, and keeping Siskin’s physical plant up to date with added parking spaces and state-of-the-art nursing equipment.
Sim says it was a “luxury” to follow Main in the job. “Bob Main had done an amazing job of articulating what Siskin’s mission and values were,” Sim says.
The fact that she is a woman made the hand-off easier, Sim says. “I wasn’t trying to fill (Main’s) shoes,” she says. “Mine were a different pair of shoes.”