In business, like medicine, sometimes you need a second opinion. A year and a half ago, an analyst questioned whether IASIS would be in it for the duration. Today, it's a different story. IASIS has accomplished what many are now calling an impressive turnaround, and the company is growing.
"We've started, and in some cases completed, expansions, renovations or facility upgrades in every single hospital we own. We've had four solid quarters of improved earnings over the previous year. We've improved our processes and our quality, by developing the most innovative information and technology systems in the industry. Every single day, we get better," says David White, chairman and CEO of IASIS.

A New Hospital for IASIS
Perhaps the bright future of the company is most visible on a vacant lot of land in Texas, where IASIS will build its first new hospital.
Scheduled to open in early 2005 with approximately 200 beds in all-private rooms, this state-of-the-art facility will feature the most advanced medical equipment and technology. The building will be beautiful, designed for patient comfort and convenience, and the floor plan will be laid out in a way that is efficient for the hospital's physicians and staff.
"New buildings are easy to get fascinated with, and this hospital, because it is our first, will mark a milestone for us," says White. "But truly great hospitals are made of great people, and we have great people in place in all of our hospitals."

How We Deliver Healthcare is Most Important
As he looks to the future, White points to three major areas where IASIS hospitals can distinguish themselves - excellence in emergency medicine, strong physician relationships, and outstanding customer service.
"Our hospitals are not necessarily going to be the biggest in the markets we serve," says White. "But our hospitals can be the best at certain things. I've challenged the leadership of every hospital to focus on those things, because if we do, our hospitals will continue to grow and our company will keep getting stronger."

Sea Davis Hospital's
Expanded ER
Davis Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, Utah, has doubled the size of its Emergency Department. The 8,000-square-foot renovation added 11 beds, for a total of 23. The state-of-the-art ER includes a dedicated lab services team, systems designed to decrease waiting time, and a children's playroom, decorated with a sea-themed mural (right).

Oh Baby! Tempe St. Luke's
Brings Back OB
After a two-and-a-half year hiatus, Tempe St. Luke's Hospital will once again offer obstetrics in a newly expanded and renovated facility. The Birthing Suites at Tempe St. Luke's offers private maternity suites for labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum, all of which feature private bathrooms with Jacuzzi tubs, sleeper chairs for overnight visitors, and a home-like setting. Along with a family-centered environment, the new unit will have the latest medical technology, and a group of certified nurse-midwives.

Note This Idea:
Greet Newborns with Song
At Mid-Jefferson Hospital in Nederland, Texas, everyone can't help but share in the joy of a new baby's arrival. Whenever an infant is born, the hospital celebrates the arrival by playing a lullaby over the hospital's public address system. "In the chaos of the day, to hear 'Rock-A-Bye Baby' never fails to bring smiles to employees' faces," says Georgiana Ramirez, Mid-Jefferson's Women's Center director.

Palms of Pasadena
Gets Advanced MRI
Palms of Pasadena in St. Petersburg is one of a select group of hospitals to use the expanded technology of the Signa Magnetic Resonance Imaging system. This MRI provides greater diagnostic information for doctors and is a wide-open environment, for better patient comfort.

Bigger, Better ER
At Odessa, Texas
Over 7,000 square feet have been added to the Emergency Room at Odessa Regional Medical Center. The $3 million expansion was recently completed to add nine new ER rooms and expand room sizes.

This legend is the inspiration for The STAR Program, which focuses on making a difference one person at a time:

A small boy stands on the beach after a big storm. He is throwing starfish that have washed ashore back into the ocean one at a time. Noticing the boy and the scores of starfish on the beach, a man walks up and says, "You know, you can't make much of a difference here." The boy looks up at the man, and as he throws the starfish he's holding back in the ocean, he says, "But I can make a difference for this one."

Creating a Service Culture
It's all about making a difference,
one person at a time

Ask anyone who has worked in a hospital for any length of time, and he'll tell you customer service programs come and go faster than same-day surgery patients.
But when you create a culture around the idea that you serve people, good customer service becomes routine.
"It should also be very personal," says Cathy Story, chief nursing officer of IASIS. "It basically means that we're constantly thinking about how to make the hospital experience more satisfying, and acting in ways that make our patients feel more comfortable and secure."
Although it is called The STAR Program, IASIS' focus on customer service is anything but a program. It is an ongoing effort to create a culture of service excellence at all of our hospitals. And while it is about serving patients, it is about taking good care of employees and physicians, too.
Hospital teams have been given a set of guidelines and tools and are expected to work on ways to improve employee, physician and patient satisfaction, but exactly how the program is implemented is up to each hospital.
"We recognize that what works in Tampa may not work in Odessa," says Story. "By developing programs at the hospital level, we'll see creative and exciting ideas come from people who know the hospitals best, the people who work in them."

Hospitals Reach for the STARS

King Cakes for
STAR Employees

Employees selected to serve on STAR Service teams at Park Place Medical Center were treated to a Mardi Gras party. Each team decorated a table to resemble a Mardi Gras float and team members enjoyed New Orleans jazz and King Cakes as they learned the essentials of creating a service culture.

Salt Lake Regional Goes Under the Sea

Pioneer Valley Drafts SuperSTARS

Football was the theme at Pioneer Valley Hospital in Utah, where a draft party recruited employees to join STAR Service teams and the program kicked off with a tailgate party featuring hotdogs and cheerleaders.

Town & Country All-STARS

Town and Country Hospital in Tampa, the city where the New York Yankees hold spring training, pitched The STAR Program to employees with a cookout and baseball theme, including baseball tickets as prizes.

IASIS Hospitals on the cutting edge with robotic care

It's quite a question: How can a surgeon perform the most delicate kind of heart surgery without touching the patient?
There's quite an answer: The da Vinci - a robotic surgery system that puts IASIS, quite literally, on the cutting edge of medical technology.
In robotic surgery procedures, the surgeon is seated at a console a few feet away from the patient. The surgeon looks through a view-finder to get a 3-D view of the area being operated on, and can zoom in or out and move the view up, down, left, right or even rotate it for a better look.

With hand controls, the surgeon uses the same motions made during traditional surgery. Every move is transferred to a robotic arm that mimics the surgeon and actually performs the procedure on the patient.
The robotic system has several advantages over traditional laparoscopic surgery. The instruments are made to provide a wide range of motion, allowing surgeons to rotate instruments more than 360 degrees, something the human hand can't do. The da Vinci improves accuracy because it corrects even the slightest tremor in the surgeon's hand.

The system is also "intuitive," which means as the surgeon twists the controls clockwise, the robot's instruments move clockwise. In standard laparoscopic surgery, the movement of the instruments is "counter-intuitive," which is like doing surgery while looking into a mirror.
There are only about 150 da Vinci systems in use worldwide. Four of them belong to IASIS.
"This is one of the most remarkable surgical tools I've ever seen," says Sandra McRee, chief operating officer of IASIS, who made the decision to purchase the da Vincis. McRee recently observed a robotic procedure and says she was amazed at what was possible. "It seems futuristic, with the surgeon in one place and the patient in another. But when you're watching, and these robotic arms are actually operating on the patient, doing things a surgeon couldn't do before because of human limitations, you can't help but think, this is truly incredible."

Click Here to See How it Works

Odessa Hospital Makes History
Robotic surgeons perform
first-ever bypass on beating heart

"I have seen a lot of advanced technology equipment in my studies, but this is one I am truly excited about," says Dr. Saeed Ally, one of the surgeons at Park Place Medical Center who has been trained to use the da Vinci robotic surgical system.

In a heart surgery milestone, doctors at Odessa Regional Medical Center in Texas recently performed an endoscopic coronary bypass on a beating heart using the da Vinci robotic system.
It was the first time the procedure had been tried in the U.S. As part of a clinical trial approved by the FDA, the three-and-a-half hour operation was a success, with the patient leaving the hospital just 24 hours after surgery. Within days, he was able to return to work and his normal routine.
Half a million coronary bypasses are performed in the U.S. each year, but the majority require surgeons to stop the heart and place the patient on a heart-lung machine. By not stopping the heart, research shows, patients have fewer side effects and faster recovery.
Odessa surgeon Sudhir Srivastava, who performed the operation, is a pioneer in robotic procedures. "I think the robot probably operates better than the human hand," he says.

Q: IASIS makes its financial performance public each quarter. How is the company doing?

A: We're doing very well. We've had four quarters of revenue and earnings improvements, which are primarily the result of successful strategies put in place over a year ago. We're in markets where the population is growing and we're adding new technology, which is also driving our success.

Q: This represents quite a change from a year ago. Why do you think we're improving?

A: There's been a tremendous focus on operations from the top on down and it has created results. The success of focusing on product lines and all the efforts of the operations team have really produced results.

Q: It has been two years since the company's plans to go public were postponed. Is there still a plan to go public?

A: We analyze equity market conditions from time to time to optimize the potential for a successful public offering, but have no specific plans related to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) at this time. As everyone knows, the public equity markets have not been good recently. In January, there was no IPO in the U.S. for the first time since 1975, an indication of how tough the markets are. Although we can't always control the equity markets, we are going to be ready so that when the timing is right, we'll be there. At the same time, we are constantly seeking access to capital to grow, and that's not dependent on the public equity market. If the public market stays the same, we have a strong private equity partner who's been very supportive.

Q: Why did the company recently refinance its debt?

A: Our bank agreement limited our ability to spend capital to the point that it didn't match the growth opportunities we saw. We now have a fresh loan and we successfully refinanced in a turbulent time for the capital markets, which reflects well on us, because it would not have been possible without good operations and operating results.

Q: What does the company plan to spend money on in the coming year?

A: The company has ongoing or planned capital expenditures in each of its four markets. For the fiscal year ending in September, we'll spend $70 million-$80 million on capital expenditures, including expansion and renovation projects at many of the hospitals. We're also spending on advanced technology, such as robotics and imaging equipment in several hospitals.