Photo by Erin Nelson.
Jeremy Clark, the new CEO of the Brookwood Baptist Health system and Brookwood Baptist Medical Center.
Seventeen years after he first began his career at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center, Jeremy Clark has returned home.
Clark, a Birmingham native, is the new CEO of both the medical center and Brookwood Baptist Health, which oversees the hospital in Homewood along with Citizens Baptist Medical Center (Talladega), Princeton Baptist Medical Center (Birmingham), Shelby Baptist Medical Center (Alabaster), Walker Baptist Medical Center (Jasper), stand-alone emergency department in Tattersall Park (Hoover) and medical office building off Preserve Parkway (Hoover).
Getting the phone call from the board that he had been appointed as the new leader of Brookwood was special, Clark said.
“It was really incredible,” Clark said. “This is a dream job. It’s just a very special place.”
Leading the health system he started his career in is an incredible opportunity, Clark said, and he has plans to help it continue to improve and grow. But first, he has spent time meeting new people and reconnecting with old colleagues and friends.
“It’s been great to reconnect with many people I worked with in the past,” Clark said.
Clark began at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center in 2004 and when he left, was an associate administrator at the hospital. For the past 10 years, he has been leading health care organizations around the Southeast. His most recent job was leading a health system based in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
“With a proven track record of success in growing quality programs, this promotion is a homecoming for Jeremy, who started his career in health care at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center as an associate administrator,” said Dr. Saum Sutaria, the CEO for Tenet Healthcare, Brookwood Baptist Health’s parent company, in a written statement. “He is a proven leader with community commitment to this area, and he is dedicated to ensuring patients receive the highest quality care and service at our hospitals.”
Clark said he wants to continue to add quality employees and care to the health system.
“We’re going to be looking for ways to continually advance the quality of care we deliver across central Alabama,” he said. “We’re going to be recruiting new positions and new employees to help us bring new services to the various communities we serve.”
Along with increasing staff, Clark also will oversee what he said will be the most exciting project over the next few years, the installation of Brookwood Baptist Medical Center’s new operating room. The Alabama State Certificate of Need Review Board on Sept. 15 granted approval for Brookwood Baptist Medical Center to renovate and replace its operating room. The hospital broke ground for the project Nov. 10.
“This important project for our campus will deliver new and updated operating rooms with needed technological advancements, all of which will ultimately improve the experience for our patients, surgeons and staff,” the hospital said in a statement.
Photo courtesy of Brookwood Baptist Health.
A rendering of the new operating wing at Brookwood Baptist Hospital.
The new operating room is set to open in early 2023.
Clark said it is a $30 million investment to replace the operating suites with 13 new operating rooms, which will be larger than the current rooms and able to handle more advanced surgeries.
“We saw this as a great opportunity to reinvest in surgical care and continue to advance the care and be the place that people want to receive care and surgeons want to work,” Clark said.
With other major hospitals in the area, including UAB and Ascension St. Vincent’s, Clark said making sure Brookwood stays competitive begins with its people and its “outstanding” medical staff. He said he will look to add more surgeons to Brookwood’s team while also investing in the latest technologies to attract both patients and doctors.
Like every medical facility, Brookwood was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Clark said he has been struck by the “commitment of our caregivers.”
He said the hospital’s COVID-19 population has declined in the past few months, and now patients are returning to seek non-COVID care and elective surgeries.
The most challenging part of his new job is learning the organization and the footprint it has across central Alabama, he said. But while that’s hard work, it is also “invigorating,” Clark said. He said he has seen the commitment Homewood specifically has to the hospital.
“Homewood has always been a great supporter of Brookwood Baptist Medical Center,” Clark said.
Clark and his wife have two elementary-age children, and he said they were very excited to come back home, and so was the rest of his family that still lives in town.
As he takes up the mantle of leadership at the hospital, Clark said leading Brookwood is personal.
“Brookwood is a special place to me,” Clark said. “Not only did I start my career here, this is where most of my family has received their care for the past 40 years.”
Though his days typically involve meeting with key constituents and employees, it’s seeing the care given to patients that drives Clark.
“It’s an incredible field to be in,” Clark said. “The opportunity to find new ways to help people in our community, to serve this community, is incredibly exciting. … It’s seeing the patients benefit from the care we’re bringing them, hearing those stories of a lifesaving procedure, or a life-improving procedure, and hearing about the care that we’re delivering. That’s incredibly exciting to do.”
