After a year without a CEO, Kinston Community Health Center has a new leader at the helm.
Sanja K. Hudson took over the leadership on Jan. 7, bringing with her more than two decades of healthcare operations management experience.
Hudson, a native of the Washington, D.C., area, grew up in a small city in Northern Virginia, similar to Kinston, she said.
She began her career in the early 1990s at Unity Health Care in D.C., followed by a number of years at Central Care Community Health Center in Houston. Her last stint was at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.
“I’d been trying to make my way back to Northern Virginia,” Hudson said. With the desire to be closer to her two grown children and six grandchildren, her move to Kinston puts her just a few hours drive from family.
Hudson said Kinston has similar healthcare issues as the city where she grew up in Caroline County. There are people here that need medical care, but aren’t getting it, she said.
“My goal is to help those that need to be seen,” she said.
About 9,000 individuals receive care at KCHC up to three times a year. Still, many people aren’t aware the facility accepts all types of insurance. Decreasing emergency room visits by increasing awareness of KCHC, a “hidden jewel” with complete primary care and referral services, will reduce medical costs, Hudson said.
KCHC provides a range of services, including a full dental facility and discount pharmacy. But Hudson said she plans to streamline the operations for efficiency and cost-savings, utilize the many partnerships the facility has with the community and make the center a pilot program for other healthcare facilities to follow.
Currently, the four OB-GYN doctors and one midwife on staff also provide services at Lenoir Memorial Hospital and the Lenoir County Health Department. But Hudson said she hopes to expand the facility to provide a full-service OB-GYN clinic at the center.
“The goal is really to become that one-stop,” she said.
Hudson has a reputation for tightening up operations at Federal Qualified Health Centers. After she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va., she began working in patient financial services at Unity.
Mentored by CEO Vincent Keane, she learned the ropes of producing a smoother, more strategically-focused organization and left as director of management control.
“I started with two organizations,” she said, “and before I left, there were more than 30 organizations.”
In 1999, Anthony Williams, mayor at the time who was known to have pulled the District of Columbia out of financial straits, asked her to work on a focus group and committee for a program he introduced, the D.C. Healthcare Alliance, with the goal of providing every D.C. resident access to healthcare. That program is still being utilized, Hudson said.
In 2001, she began consulting for Central Care in Texas, performing audits. She was asked to open a new clinic and run it.
Hudson said she was recruited to work with the Gateway to Care, where she spent the majority of her time in Texas streamlining operations, including strategic planning and setting up policies and procedures.
“Gateway to Care is a collaboration of over 170 member organizations,” she said.
In August 2010, she received her MBA from Ashford University with a concentration in healthcare administration and was inducted into the Golden Key International Honor Society.
About two years ago, she was asked by the president of Morehouse to help the medical school improve its operations. She stayed a year and half as assistant dean and executive director for clinical affairs before taking the position in Kinston.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.