Submitted Report.
The year is 1994. Southwest Texas State’s football team struggles to a 1-5 record in the lowly Southland Conference. Hays County has just 88,000 residents.
And Chris Hartle, a West Point graduate stationed at Fort Hood, leaves the army and begins graduate work in health administration at the university in San Marcos.
| Hartle |
Now, nearly two decades later, Texas State has eschewed the “Southwest” label, the football team is winning games as a Division I member of the Sun Belt Conference, Hays County has swelled to 169,000 residents – and Chris Hartle, South Market president for Seton Healthcare Family, is enjoying a homecoming of sorts.
“One of the first comparisons that comes to mind is how much bigger Bobcat Stadium is,” Hartle said. “The whole region has definitely become a land of opportunity.”
Seton’s South Market includes Hays, southern Travis, Caldwell and Bastrop counties, so Hartle oversees operations at four hospitals: Seton Medical Center Hays in Kyle; Seton Southwest Hospital in Austin’s Oak Hill area; Seton Edgar B. Davis Hospital in Luling; and Seton Smithville Regional Hospital.
Hartle noted that the sprawling communities south and east of Austin have never had a truly regional provider of a broad array of health care services, but Seton intends to change that.
“We have a growing footprint in the region, and we’ll continue to expand the types of services we offer and improve access to the best available health care,” Hartle says.
Hays County isn’t the only entity to experience explosive growth in the past decades. When Hartle joined Seton to help operate Brackenridge Hospital (now University Medical Center Brackenridge) in Austin, the not for profit health care system consisted of two hospitals and one clinic.
Today, Seton operates five regional medical centers, including Seton Hays, Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas and UMC Brackenridge, which will be replaced in 2017 by a new, modern teaching hospital. Seton also runs a mental health hospital, rural hospitals and community clinics serving six counties.
In Hays County, there also is the Seton Family of Doctors at Hays, located in Kyle, and a medical office building of physician offices and related medical services on the north side of the hospital. Earlier this year, Seton became the official health care provider for Bobcat athletics at Texas State and broke ground on the new Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital on the south side of Seton Hays.
Hartle’s migration from tank battalion to health care is, in his words, “about big goals and big things. In both cases, there is a public good, a public benefit.
“The reason I went from the army to the arena of health care, if I had to sum it up in one word, is ‘leadership’,” he said. “I like leading. I like working with great groups of people.”
Hartle takes pride in the fact that Seton is now the official health care sponsor of Bobcat Athletics.
“It’s great fun to see the Seton signs all over the stadium,” he said. “I’m very gratified that we’re in a position to strengthen our relationship with the Bobcat Nation and the entire student body.”
Too often, people have trouble getting in to see a doctor, Hartle noted.
“We’re in the process of changing that,” he said. “We’ve made significant inroads with physicians, forging new and important relationships, and we’re continuing to build our network of providers for folks who live in and near Kyle, Buda, San Marcos, Wimberley, Bastrop, Smithville, La Grange, places like that.”
Seton will continue to offer more services and strengthen services already in place, Hartle said. He noted that Seton operates Central Texas’ only Level I trauma centers at UMC Brackenridge and Dell Children’s.
“World-class trauma care is only minutes away from folks who live in surrounding counties,” he said. “The people who live and work here, who are creating this vibrant local economy, deserve the best health care that’s available. That’s why we’re here.”
