After a professional life in big cities, Cris Rivera sees moving to Iola as a return to her rural roots. Rivera is the new chief executive officer at Allen County Hospital, taking the reins on Nov. 1.
She comes here after two years as chief operating officer at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. Before that, she and her husband, David, were in Lafayette, La., for three years, then for the bulk of their professional careers in Houston, Texas.
Rivera put her name in for the running for the Iola position “because of the great needs of rural America,” she said. “Distance should not be figured into a hospital’s ability to give high quality care. Our goal is to ensure patients get the very best in a rural setting.”
Rivera grew up in Edinburg, Texas, on the Gulf Coast near Brownsville, where her father was a farmer. “It was a small town then,” she said of the area which has since developed into the Rio Grande Coast, strong in tourism.
Rivera joins the hospital at a critical juncture. With the site selected on North Kentucky Street for a new hospital, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of determining the specifics of the building.
Rivera is unfazed by the task only because she’s done it before – four times to be exact.
“I assisted with the design of the hospital being built in McAllen, Texas; with a surgery center in Houston; renovations to the hospital in Lafayette, and a $120 million addition to the existing hospital in Overland Park,” she said.
RIVERA, 54, plans to move to Iola if the stars align.
Her husband is assistant principal at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City.
“His next career move is either as a principal or as an assistant to a superintendent,” Rivera said. If that doesn’t happen for him in the immediate area, the dual career couple will select a home midway between Iola and Kansas City. “Perhaps Ottawa,” Rivera said.
They were high school sweethearts in Edinburg. “We were meant to be,” Rivera said. They have been married 32 years.
The Riveras have two children: a son, David Christian, who is married, and a daughter, Cynthia Deanne.
Rivera cites her father as instrumental to her pursuing higher education and developing a good work ethic.
“He always told us that no one can take your education away from you. And that an education lets you pursue your dreams. ‘The sky is the limit,'” she said. “He also said with hard work, you can achieve success.”
Rivera’s father lived by his words. In addition to farming he also was a successful real estate developer.
Rivera did her undergraduate and graduate work in San Antonio, Texas. She received a bachelor of science in clinical lab science from Incarnate Word College. Her master’s in business administration is from Our Lady of the Lake University.
Between the two degrees she worked almost 20 years, first as a lab director at West Houston Medical Center, before she began overseeing the departments of pharmacy, physical therapy and radiology. She also worked at the Santa Rosa Hospital and M.D. Anderson in Houston.
She joined Hospital Corporation of America directly out of college and has remained with it ever since. She credits the organization for “virtually paying for my master’s degree,” in its tuition reimbursement program for those seeking advanced degrees. She received her MBA in hospital administration in 1997.
Rivera looks forward to Iola becoming “my community,” she said. “I’ve always felt a connection to small towns.”
She likens that connection to how a hospital staff treats its patients.
“It’s more than meeting their medical needs, but also their emotional needs through compassionate care,” she said.
Rivera sees her immediate goals in recruiting more specialists to assist primary care doctors at the hospital. Specialists such as cardiologists, oncologists and an orthopedic surgeon would help draw patients to the hospital.
The hospital currently has an orthopedic surgeon who visits the hospital’s clinic once a month.
“If we could get her to come every other week,” that would help build the number of patients who stay at the hospital to recover after surgery, Rivera said.
“We’ve got to have a 75- to 80-percent occupancy rate for the finances to fall in place,” she said.
Rivera would prefer the bulk of patient rooms in the new hospital to be private.
“I’d like to see 12 private beds from the outset with six or seven being double-occupancy,” she said. Rivera noted the patient rooms in the renovated Overland Park hospital are all private.
“That’s what patients want,” she said.
Realizing she’s jumping in midship to the hospital’s planning, Rivera said she appreciates all the effort hospital trustees and hospital staff have put toward it.
“It’s an exciting effort,” she said, “not only for the hospital, but also for the county as a whole.”
