Featuring Rotarian Stephen Porter

At work with Stephen Porter

By Amy Jeter, The Virginian-Pilot - 4/3/2011

President of Sentara Bayside Hospital and Sentara Princess Anne campus in Virginia Beach

MY FATHER WAS a physician; my mom was a physical therapist. So I thought I was going to go with medical school, but I didn’t make it that route. // During some premedical classes down at the Medical College of Virginia, I met a professor who got me connected to the health care administration program.

I went and met with a number of professors and really enjoyed it. I had stronger business skills than I had physician/medicine skills. From there I entered the program, completed the program, did some international work with the American International Health Alliance in the Czech Republic and then came to Sentara in a fellowship program about 14 years ago and have been here ever since.

I wasn’t sure where I was going to go within the health care field. When I was coming in and going through school, health care was really moving away from a hospital focus. This was the time of HMOs, so a lot of people felt that health care was going to be driven by the payers.

Once I got into Sentara, I realized that hospital ad   ministration was an area of focus that I wanted to invest in, so I did a lot of my work in that area. I have my own personal goals and aspirations. I would like to be a COO or a CEO of a health care system at some point, and so I know   I need to go this route in order to ultimately attain my professional goal.

Sometimes my day will start at 6 o’clock in the morning to meet with physicians and surgeons and will go to 9 o’clock at night. Unfortunately, a lot of the day is meetings, and you’re trying to balance your business day with your patient care day and how to make sure that you’re accessible to patients and to staff.

You can’t do this job and not care about people. I don’t have a clinical background, but I’m dealing with patients and family members who are going through something that they don’t expect to go through. You have to have a strong business sense, and you have to have the ability to look at things from a legal perspective, as well. Health care is the most highly regulated industry that you will ever come across. You have to be constantly in tune with that. You have to be able to learn every day because every day, there’s something new coming out.

Some feel that the hospitals control a lot more than they actually do. A lot   of time, it’s educating and helping people understand that we’re in the same boat as Dr. X or Dr. Y. My reimbursement is not going up as yours is going down. We’re both seeing our reimbursements going down and how do you balance the financing of health care with the delivery expectations that people have?

Right now my focus is, honestly, getting this hospital campus up and running. Then I’ll see where things go from there.

This is a $200 million project, something that’s going to be very special to the community. So to be able to be involved from the ground up to the opening is a big driver for me. That’s what I’m really liking about my job right now.

This is something that very few people get to do in their health care career: develop, open and operate a brand-new facility. So to see it all come together will be great.

And then a vacation would be very nice.

Photo by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

THE PORTER FILE

Age 43

Residence Virginia Beach

Family married with two children, 11-year-old Jacob and 8-year-old Maura

Education Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration from James Madison University; master’s
                degree in health care administration from Virginia Commonwealth University

Hobbies family, biking, swimming, basketball

About Rotary
Rotary has over 1.2 million men and women members globally in over 32,000 clubs in 168 counties. Rotary volunteers enjoy the camaraderie of a service club that provides humanitarian aid work and service at the local and global levels, as well as excellent opportunities for business networking. The business club encourages Rotarians to maintain high ethical standards in their businesses and lives, and strive to build goodwill and peace in the world.

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