December 2, 2005
Ex-hospital CEO named first director of Purdue's Regenstrief health center
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A longtime hospital administrator from Montana will become the first director of Purdue University's Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, a research initiative focusing on ways to improve health-care delivery.
Steven M. Witz, who has been president the past three years at St. Patrick Hospital and Health Center in Missoula, Mont., will start Jan. 17 at Regenstrief, which is housed within Discovery Park's e-Enterprise Center.
"In Steven Witz, Purdue and the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering are getting a leader with nearly three decades of experience in America's health-care system," said Purdue President Martin C. Jischke. "He's ideally suited to lead this center in realizing its ultimate mission to minimize costs, improve service and re-engineer health-care delivery in America."
Joseph Pekny, director of the e-Enterprise Center and a professor of chemical engineering, has been acting director of the Regenstrief Center since it was launched at Purdue in January.
A Minnesota native, Witz has 26 years of experience in hospital administration. Before taking the helm at St. Patrick's in February 2003, he was senior vice president and chief operation officer at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Wis.
Witz has held administrative roles at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City and Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill. He also taught health administration at the University of Minnesota and the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, and public administration at Brigham Young University.
"No other issue at the local and national level gets people's attention faster than the rising cost of health care," Witz said. "With my many years planning, managing and marshaling resources in a hospital setting, I look forward to leading an organization that's using an interdisciplinary approach to help make the delivery of health-care services more efficient and cost-effective.
"The people in health care are very much behind this kind of goal because it really translates into more and better care for patients."
His three years in Montana helped Witz focus on rural health care and regional networking. Witz also has been instrumental in the formation of the Northern Rockies Health Care Alliance, a network of six hospitals in western Montana linked through medical and information technologies.
In line with Witz's new role atop Regenstrief, the network will pilot a project to evaluate improvements in health-care delivery in conjunction with the Montana Professional Standards Review Organization.
Witz received a doctorate in hospital and health-care administration in 1986, a master's degree in public health in 1977 and a bachelor's degree in psychology, all from the University of Minnesota.
"Steven brings a lifetime of experience from the ever-changing world of health care to this top post at Regenstrief," said Charles Rutledge, who is vice president for research at Purdue and served as Discovery Park's first executive director. "He clearly stood out among the candidates with the contributions he has made in the professional and academic settings."
Pekny will remain on Regenstrief's leadership team to assist Witz with the transition.
"I'm proud of what we have accomplished in starting Regenstrief and establishing partnerships with key players in the center's first 12 months of operation," Pekny said. "And I'm excited about Steven Witz's selection to lead us to that next level in helping address the rising cost of health care."
At Regenstrief, Purdue experts are applying the principles of technology, engineering, supply chain management and more. Initial areas of research have included improving the safety and efficiency of patient care; providing more efficient deployment of physicians, nurses and other health-care personnel; and better coordinating inpatient and outpatient treatment.
Literally every college at Purdue is involved in Regenstrief activities. For example, the center also involves liberal arts faculty in areas such as sociology, health communication and kinesiology, as well as Purdue researchers in pharmacy, nursing, health sciences, consumer sciences, technology, agriculture and veterinary medicine.
Last April, Regenstrief and Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health, which operates 16 Indiana hospitals, began a strategic partnership that is developing projects in several areas.
The $12.4 million e-Enterprise Center is scheduled to open in January 2007 in a 49,000-square-foot building south of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. About 25 percent of that floor space will be devoted to Regenstrief.
One of 10 centers within Discovery Park, the e-Enterprise Center includes Regenstrief as well as the Center for Research on Information Assurance and Security and the Purdue Homeland Security Institute.
Purdue's Regenstrief Center gained its initial funding from the Regenstrief Foundation, a nonprofit foundation begun in Indianapolis in 1969.
The Regenstrief Institute, an organization at the University of Indiana School of Medicine in Indianapolis, developed the Regenstrief Medical Record System, one of the first and now one of oldest and largest electronic medical record systems in the world.
The Regenstrief name comes from Sam Regenstrief, who emigrated from Vienna to Indianapolis as a child. Regenstrief founded a company that manufactured and popularized the low-cost home dishwasher, at one time producing 37 percent of the world's dishwashers in Connersville, Ind. Regenstrief died in 1988.
The Regenstrief Foundation carries out Sam and his wife Myrtie Regenstrief's philanthropic legacy of interweaving medicine, engineering and technology.
Writer: Phillip Fiorini, (765) 496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu
Sources: Martin Jischke, (765) 494-9708, mcjischke@purdue.edu
Steve Witz, (406) 251-4647, switz@stpatrick.org
Chip Rutledge, (765) 494-6209, chipr@purdue.edu
Joseph Pekny, 494-7901, pekny@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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