For the last 17 years, Gregg Hopkins has served as the first and only executive director of the Community Health Centers of Greater Dayton.
The health center’s mission is to provide primary and preventive health care services to those in need, regardless of their ability to pay. CHCGD operates five locations in Greater Dayton.
Now Hopkins has announced he’ll retire in the spring after the organization finds his replacement.
We asked Hopkins to reflect on his time with the organization and its future.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Gregg Hopkins: It's very rewarding work. I used to work for a large hospital system. I always said I would never go back and here I can retire and say I've never gone back just because I really enjoy what we do.
It's challenging, you never have all the money you need.
We are a nonprofit, so these last couple of years especially have been challenging because we're a labor-intensive business. So I make the analogy to the restaurant industry that you know they're closing down like crazy. Same thing. Very labor intensive which means our salary costs have gone up, but our revenue has been flat.
So since COVID our life has changed, and it won't go back.
Jerry Kenney: What path were you on early on that led you to join the Community Health Center in its early days?
Hopkins: Great question. I have worked in health care for a long, long time. This will be my 36th year in health care. So I worked at a large hospital system, the Christ Hospital system, for about 18 years and while I was at the system, I was in the hospital administration. The last job I had there, I was approached by the CEO of a community health center in Cincinnati who I've known as a friend, known her kids kind of friends. But she asked me to serve on their board of directors, and I served as a board member for about six years. I was actually president of the board for last year and a half of that six years there.
At that time, she approached me about if I would be willing to come on to that organization as the chief operating officer, COO, because she wanted to retire. And she felt like, if I come on as COO, then when she retired, I could move into the CEO job because the timing was good.
I realized I did not enjoy hospital administration. I was sitting there in meetings all day. It was very political, and it just wasn't for me. I didn't have the passion, but I fell in love with the mission and the passion of the people who were at that health center and felt like I could take the cut and pay from hospital administration and have a more meaningful, enjoyable work life and it worked out. So I did work there for a little less than a year. I recognized she wasn't going to retire anytime soon, so the opportunity came available here to create a new organization, and I was fortunate that the board trusted me to do so.
Kenney: Let's look at today and into the future. What's on the near horizon and the challenges you're facing today?
Hopkins: Once again, the financial challenges are still there. We've had our share. I'm happy to say we've come out of that. We've kind of hit rock bottom and on our way back up post-COVID. So we've got finances are looking pretty good these days. And we are making some changes to keep that going. So we are looking at creating a pharmacy within our centers. We currently contract with about 40 different area pharmacies. Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Kroger, you name it. We can send our patients to those organizations, and they get a discount on their medications. We will maintain those contractual arrangements, but we want to create our own pharmacy within our four walls. So that's a project that we hope to have completed by the end of this year.
We've got some positions, key level positions, we want to fill as well. You know, I'm not sure if it's best for me to fill those or for the next person to fill. We need to find a medical director. Our medical director, who was working for us for the last eight years or so, had some significant health challenges herself and had to leave. So we've got an interim medical director, but we do want to have a permanent position filled there.
So some key positions like that. We want to fill. [We're] Pretty good on staffing right now overall. We're able to we were able to fill our nursing and front office positions. We could always use another doctor or nurse practitioner.
Kenney: Gregg Hopkins is the executive director of Community Health Centers of Greater Dayton. Thanks so much for your time and your long-term service to the community.
Hopkins: I've enjoyed it and looking forward to seeing this organization survive and grow over the next 17 or 18 years or so. Thank you, Jerry.
