{"id":113205,"date":"2015-04-15T15:55:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T21:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-southwest-ceo-has-big-goals\/"},"modified":"2015-04-15T15:55:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T21:55:50","slug":"new-southwest-ceo-has-big-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-southwest-ceo-has-big-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"New Southwest CEO has big goals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New
New CEO of Southwest Health Systems W. Kent Rogers visits with Ryan Saunders at the Cortez Area Chamber of Commerce After Hours Thursday.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are going to become the preferred provider and employer of choice in this region of the state,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n

Rogers, 49, grew up in Lexington, Tenn., and recently moved here from Mercy Hospital in Ada, Okla.<\/p>\n

Rogers is enjoying the mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family started bringing me to Southern Colorado for vacations,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cI love the outdoors, hiking, camping, fishing and whitewater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers and his wife, Elisabeth, have a daughter who is a senior in high school and a son, who is a sixth-grader.<\/p>\n

Rogers said he\u2019s looking forward to going snowboarding with his son, which the two learned this winter.<\/p>\n

Rogers has 16 years of experience as a CEO and assistant administrator in hospitals ranging from 25 to more than 300 beds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to be a hospital administrator since I was in high school,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cIt was a calling.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges facing local health care, Rogers said, is keeping good nurses and good doctors.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing health care workers to smaller communities is always a challenge \u2013 nurses, therapists and physicians,\u201d he said. \u201cIt takes special people with a calling to be good health-care providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other challenges include changes in health-care reimbursement and Medicare reimbursement.<\/p>\n

So far, Rogers is enjoying Cortez. He grew up in a town with a population of about 5,700.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the lifestyle and the ability to get to know people on a personal level in a smaller community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rogers said he hopes to become responsible for the health of people in the town \u2013 not just treating people when they are sick, but keeping them healthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CEO of Southwest Health Systems W. Kent Rogers visits with Ryan Saunders at the Cortez Area Chamber of Commerce After Hours Thursday.Sam Green\/Cortez Journal \u201cWe are going to become the preferred provider and employer of choice in this region of the state,\u201d Rogers said. Rogers, 49, grew up in Lexington, Tenn., and recently moved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113205"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}