I got a call the other day from Brian Cunningham, the new CEO at Wahiawa General Hospital. Would I like to come in and talk over new doings at the hospital? Sounded like a story, so I drove up the hill to Wahiawa Town.

We sat down in Brian’s office. He’s sharp and all business in an aloha shirt with neat greying hair. Looks like what he is … a middle-aged successful executive. The more we talked the more I realized that the story was not the hospital but the guy in front of me.

Brian grew up in South Jersey, near Philly. His first job was parking cars at a local hospital, when he quickly realized the special calling that hospital medicine had for him. As he put people into cars he could thrill with a mother and her newborn baby or feel the pain of a man who just lost his wife of 40 years. He was hooked on the reality of the medical profession and, as he puts it, a life of service. Brian graduated from college and began a medical career as an occupational therapist. Along the way he earned an MBA the hard way … on-line. One night he and his wife looked at each other and decided that they needed a change … of location and life-style. Off they flew to a completely different life, from the buttoned-down East Coast to the wild west of New Mexico. He found a hospital in need of a Director of Rehabilitation and took the job, then applied for the CEO’s position. Sweetheart job, right? Not quite. The hospital was $9 million in debt. He took the job. In a year his hospital had a million dollar surplus.

What? Ten-million-dollar turnaround in 12 months? How do you do that? Brian went to his white-board and showed me how, in the form of a short course on his philosophy of life. Very short course: just two short sentences: be nice, and get things done.

Be nice … Brian has discovered what most of us already know: that the local folks, real local or longtime Haole, are good hearted and just want to live a good life, do a good job. He recognizes that, capitalizes on that, and treats his staff, and everyone with kindness and respect. Simple, eh?

Get stuff done. At Wahiawa General that means, in general, cut waste and improve efficiency and quality of care.

Does it work? It did in New Mexico and it’s working in Wahiawa. The hospital here has improved in ratings compared with all hospitals in the U. S. from two-star (bottom half) to three-star (top half) … going, Brian says, to four-star, or top 20 percent. Finances have improved as well from “deep red” to “break even.”

When I tell him that two people, one of his doctors and one of his board-of-directors, have told me how optimistic they are of the future, Brian shrugs. “I’m here to serve,” he says. Getting into my car for the trip back down the hill to the North Shore I’m thinking that Brian and Wahiawa General are serving all of us, Central Oahu and the North Shore, extremely well.