Former Mercy Medical Center CEO Tim Charles takes on new teaching role at Coe College

CEDAR RAPIDS — Swapping his suit and tie for blue jeans, boots and a zip-up gray sweater matching his trimmed mustache and wavy hair, former Mercy Medical Center President and Chief Executive Officer Tim Charles earlier this month stood before a Coe College class to share his expertise on “health and society.”

In a sunlit classroom debuted with the campus’ 2-year-old Center for Health & Society, the recently-retired Charles pulled from his decades of health care leadership knowledge to teach his first semester of “Exploration in Health and Society” — relevant to many of Coe’s health care-related majors and minors.

“During the Bronze Age, the average life expectancy was about 18 years old,” Charles, 67, told his students of the evolution of health throughout history. “Roman Empire, 22 years old. That was the life expectancy. The average person lived 22 years. In 1776, when this country was founded, the average life expectancy was 36 years. Today, it's 77 and a half roughly. And here's what most people would give credit to: public health.”

Touting clean water, antibiotics, prenatal care and a drop in infant mortality — among other things — Charles highlighted gains that have advanced health care, ways society has informed those shifts and challenges still in play.

“We talked about ageism. … What are the stereotypes we have of people that look like me?” Charles reminded students of their discussions so far this term. “We talked about health care bias, and there are a whole variety of ways in which for older persons — depending upon your racial identification — that bias shows up that are frustrating and concerning.”

Pushing students to tap their personal experience in considering ways they might one day help the industry professionally, Charles spoke from his front-row vantage point of the health care evolution — which started back in 1976 in a Salt Lake City hospital.

‘Coming home’

At age 19, pursing his undergraduate degree at the University of Utah, Charles had been working typical college jobs — cleaning offices and helping in the cafeteria — before deciding, “I want to do something that’s a little bit more meaningful.”

“But I had no intention of going into health care,” Charles said of his first industry gig as an orderly at Intermountain Health. “I was the gopher for the nurses,” he said.

But the job was foundational.

“One of the things I'm most proud of is that I was actually raised and trained by nurses at the bedside,” Charles said of what launched his lifelong career in health care.

Pretty soon after starting, Charles found himself involved with the behavioral health team — advancing post-undergrad to an assistant administrator while he completed his MBA at Utah State University.

“As is often the case, there were individuals that saw things in me that I didn't necessarily fully appreciate in myself, and they kept giving me greater and greater opportunities,” he said. “So I kind of developed within that organization and had a series of progressively successive roles in evolving leadership.”

From his roots in rural Connecticut until his family moved to Utah when he was 13, Charles’ next leap from Intermountain Health in Salt Lake brought him to Oregon and northern California, where he joined a health care system that allowed him to achieve a professional dream.

“One of my goals was to be appointed as CEO of a hospital before I was 30 years old, and I achieved that,” Charles said of his 1989 appointment to lead Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol, Calif. — where he stayed until 1996.

Around that time, some former colleagues started a new company around a hospital they’d acquired in Texas — luring Charles to move his family to Denton, Texas, where he served as CEO of Denton Community Hospital.

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“And then I actually got a call about an opportunity at Mercy,” Charles said. “And I knew of Mercy by reputation. And I knew of Jim Tinker, who was then the CEO, by reputation. Jim was very involved in health care nationally. So I agreed to come up and take a look.

“And, as I’ve said often, that very first visit, I just felt as if I was coming home.”

‘That was refreshing’

Charles began his two-decade stint at Cedar Rapids’ Mercy Medical Center in 2003 — hooked by his first interaction with the staff and their “palpable sense of mission.”

Although a CEO in Texas at the time, Charles agreed to move to Iowa and serve as Tinker’s chief operating officer — which he said some could see as an “interesting decision.”

“But Jim was getting ready to retire, and they were looking for a successor, and what this opportunity afforded me was the chance to not only lead a hospital, but actually to lead a system that was an independent organization,” Charles said. “All the other hospitals that I've been involved in were part of large corporations.”

Four years later, Charles officially took the reins in 2007 — and over his 15 and a half years in leadership, grew the organization’s assets from $325 million to $831 million; upped its revenue from $170 million to $420 million; oversaw development of the Hall-Perrine Cancer Center and other projects; and co-founded the MedQuarter Regional Medical District.

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“But what became so meaningful to me, and it was something that over the 20 years that I was involved with Mercy became increasingly important, was just the experience of being in the space that the Sisters of Mercy had founded and their commitment to caring for the sick — but, in particular, caring for the sick-poor,” he said. “And ensuring that superb, nationally-recognized, incredibly high-quality care was available, but available to all. That was refreshing.”

Mercy, he said, drew on that mission especially during some of its more extraordinary moments on his watch — like the 2008 flood and 2020 pandemic.

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“What became absolutely apparent to me was the critical importance of cultivating and nurturing a culture within the organization such that when you're really put to the test, as we were in both cases, you had very capable people that were prepared to step up in whatever fashion was needed,” Charles said. “They were the ones that were the heroes in both those cases.”

It was those experiences, he said, that equipped him to teach — post-Mercy retirement in 2022 — about the evolving health care challenges of today.

“So when the invitation was extended to me to teach this course, I was really, really thrilled,” Charles said.

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Not only did it give him the chance to work inside the new Coe center — completed in 2022 — but, Charles said, he was excited about the idea of “funneling students through the center to consider health care careers.”

“Because gosh we need them,” he said. “So the opportunity to have a chance to interact with students, just was very, very appealing to me.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com