Nine years ago, Skip Davis needed a place like Sacred Heart Medical Center about as much as Sacred Heart needed a person like Davis.


In his mid-50s at the time, Davis was living in Sacramento, Calif., and working for a national consulting firm as a turnaround specialist, using his 25-some years of experience as a hospital CEO to help stop the bleeding of red ink at medical centers in critical condition across the U.S. For that job, he found himself in cities large and small for extended periodsand at home only for two or three days at a time. After four years in that job, it was proving to be a rigorous schedule.


Sacred Heart wasnt in financial straits, but it was growing larger and more complex. For the first time, the nonprofit that had been started and led by the Sisters of Providence did a national search to find a new CEO. It found Davis.


Coming to a facility like Sacred Heart was just what the doctor ordered, Davis says.


Rich Umbdenstock, CEO of Providence Services Corp., which oversees Sacred Heart, says Davis was only the hospitals second CEO who wasnt a member of the Sisters of Providence and the first who didnt come up through the ranks of the organization.


Certainly, there was some anxiety, Umbdenstock says. Hes a marvelous communicator. He got off to a good start, and it turned out to be a good transition.


Under Davis leadership, Sacred Heart and other Sisters of Providence-sponsored health-care organizations in Eastern Washington developed whats now called Providence Health Care, in essence creating a regional health-care network. Davis is CEO of Providence Health Care, in addition to Sacred Heart


In recent years, Sacred Heart has undergone an unprecedented, $131 million expansion of its sprawling campus on Spokanes lower South Hill. As part of that growth, the medical center has established a childrens hospital and bolstered its womens health services. It currently is the largest private employer in Spokane County, with about 3,200 workers.


Dr. Franklin Browne, a retired physician who has sat on various boards for Providence and has known Davis since he moved to Spokane, says the expansion and other moves have allowed the organization to operate more efficiently and to take advantage of economies of scale. He says they have occurred largely due to Davis foresight.


The wonderful thing about Skip is that Skip has vision, Browne says. He can look down the road and see whats coming.


In addition to leading the large, complex hospital organization, Davis has become an instrumental member of some civic groups and efforts. He recently became chairman of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce. Also, he was a key player in the effort to build a statue in Riverfront Park honoring the late astronaut Michael P. Anderson, a Cheney High School graduate who perished in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle accident.


Sister Michelle Holland, a retired Providence board member who was on the committee that decided to hire Davis, says of the CEO, Hes got himself invested in the community of Spokane. She adds, Hes a deeply religious man. He really appreciates the values of the company.


Davis is an Episcopalian and says Catholic-based Sacred Heart has a mission and values that mirror his personal beliefs and principles, many of which were ingrained in him during his formative years.


Davis was born in Virginia, as Ryland P. Davis Jr., son of a Charlottesville real estate broker who was known around town as Skip. Little Skip, as the younger Davis was called, grew up watching a television series called West Point and dreaming of living the cadet life. After becoming an Eagle Scout and graduating from high school, he went to the strict Virginia Military Institute, where he survived a year of rat linesimilar to being a plebe at the U.S. Military Academy, in West Point, N.Y., and being at the beck and call of upperclassmanand rose to the rank of cadet captain by his senior year.


Davis says cadet life didnt provide the traditional social side of collegecadets had classes on Saturdays and rarely got weekends away from campus. He learned first-hand, however, about perseverance and became confident that he could rise to challenges that came his way.


I learned that if you make up your mind to do something, theres not a lot somebody can throw your way to stop you, if youre determined, Davis says.


While at VMI, Davis worked at his dads real estate firm during summers. He had thought that he might take over his dads business, but found quickly that it didnt suit him.


His dad had become friends with several vice presidents at the University of Virginias medical center through a Jaycees club in Charlottesville and encouraged his son to consider a career in health-care administration.


At one point, Davis had a temporary job with the medical center and found that he enjoyed the health-care environment.


I liked being around the advances in medicines and the doctors and nurses, he says.


Shortly after graduation, Davis father became ill, and Davis, who had entered the U.S. Army, asked for a military assignment close to home. He became an assistant range officer at Fort Gordon, Va., and stayed close to his dad while he was dying.


During his two years in the military, he took college classes at night that were prerequisites for the graduate school he hoped to attend. After discharge, he enrolled in the masters of business administration program at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., with an emphasis on health-care administration.


Being 26 years old and wanting to finish his studies quickly, Davis took all of the required coursework in one year, taking more than full loads. Like his years at VMI, it was a cloistered experience in which he regularly began his studies at 7 a.m. and closed the books at midnight.


For his administrative residency, he chose to go to the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, in 1967. It was there that he became an avid sailor. The girlfriend of a guy whose boat he crewed upon introduced him to a young United Airlines employee named Sharon, whom Davis began dating. They married in 1970 and now have been married for 35 years. They have two grown children.


Davis stayed in the Bay Area for five years before taking his first CEO position at a 400-bed hospital in Indianapolis. He and Sharon had tried to stay on the West Coast, and later returned when he became a regional director for Hospital Affiliates International and moved to Sacramento, Calif., where the couple raised their family and lived for almost 20 years.


After a number of years with the national hospital chain, Davis left to start what he calls a period of entrepreneurship. He and a group of partners started a company called American Health Group International, which bought six for-profit hospitals in Southern California.


One of those hospitals had a health-management organization, and Davis focused on growing that part of the company for two years. In that time, enrollment grew to 30,000 from 12,000.


That experience served me well, Davis says. It sharpened my business acumen.


Upon parting ways with American Health Group in the early 1990s, Davis stayed in Sacramento, but became a turnaround specialist for Tampa, Fla.-based Hunter Group. He says Hunter had a reputation as a guerilla operation that took on medical centers in tough situations that needed drastic changes. In his four years with that company, Davis became well-acquainted with Catholic health care by bailing out some Catholic hospitals elsewhere in the country. That expertise led Sacred Heart to seek him out.


Once he was here, Davis says he found that the Inland Northwest fit his lifestyle preference well. He says Spokane is similar to his native Charlottesville in that its close to mountains and fishing streams.


He describes himself as an avid fly fisherman, and Browne describes him as a very good one, saying that Davis often has the hot rod when they are on the river together.


Davis also is an avid pilot, and his adoration of flying is apparent in his collection of model airplanes in his office. He started flying when he was in the military and became instrument rated in the 1980s. Currently, he owns a Cessna 182 with two Spokane-area physicians.


Davis turned 65 earlier this year, but says he has no desire to retire. He says hell take the same approach to retirement as a physician friend of his in Colville whos 77, and, as he says, has turned retirement age 13 times.