Ancell Bids a Farewell to Missouri Delta
By Scott Welton
scottw@standard-democrat.com
After 39 years, Missouri Delta Medical Center’s president Charles Ancell officially retires
SIKESTON — Success in life is often found close to home.
A gathering for Charles Ancell’s retirement as president of Missouri Delta Medical Center held Friday at the hospital is only five blocks away from where he grew up.
Born in Sikeston, “I grew up on Sikes Street,” Ancell said.
After graduating from Sikeston Senior High School in 1965, he attended Southeast Missouri State University and graduated with an accounting degree four years later after which he immediately entered the working world.
“I was hired right out of college by Price Waterhouse,” Ancell said.
His work for that firm soon brought him right back home again, however.
“I was auditing the hospital — I was the senior auditor for the 1971 audit,” he recalled.
A few weeks after completing that audit, he was contacted by MDMC’s chief administrator.
“In January, the hospital’s chief financial officer left. Harold Jones called me and asked if I wanted to interview for the position,” Ancell said. “He asked if I wanted to come back home and almost 39 years later here I am.”
Ancell said his first job as CFO was to bring MDMC into the computer age.
“When I came here, the accounting was on ledger cards,” he recalled. “I put in the first computer and we used that system for a number of years before the person that came after me changed it to the new system we’re using now. The system we have now you can add modules to, so we can keep adding and upgrading.”
When Jones retired in 1990, Ancell made the move to the president’s office and took on the responsibilities of leadership for the hospital.
“Trying to keep an adequate, comprehensive medical staff is probably the biggest concern,” Ancell said. “And then you have to have a place for them to work as well as a facility that allows you to attract the quality staff that you need.”
While Ancell was CFO, he got his feet wet in improving facilities with the addition of MDMC’s surgical wing, referred to as H wing by hospital staff, from 1983-1985.
“That was the first major one I was involved in,” he said.
Over the last 20 years as president, Ancell has been at the helm for a long list of additions and improvements beginning with the ReStart building behind the hospital.
Later projects during his two decades as president include adding additional floors to the H wing to house the hospital’s obstetrics unit, outpatient surgery and inpatient surgical rooms; building the dialysis center behind the hospital next to ReStart; establishing physician services in the Jolly Building across the street from the hospital; transforming an empty space on the third floor above the surgical wing into post-operation patient rooms; and the renovation of the 2F and 3F wings.
“We completely and totally stripped them down to the bare walls and rebuilt them,” Ancell said.
This final project completed the conversion of MDMC into a hospital that features only private rooms for its patients.
“Every patient service area in this hospital has been redone in the last 20 years,” Ancell said. “We also completely redid the kitchen — that probably disrupted us more than anything. We cooked meals at the restaurant building that is now El Bracero’s and then transported the meals here.”
Ancell has also overseen significant changes inside the hospital’s walls over the years as he worked to take advantage of rapidly advancing technologies in medical and administrative equipment.
“The radiology system advancements have just been wonderful,” Ancell said. “You can transfer images anywhere in the world and they see the same images you see. We don’t even use X-ray film anymore — it’s all digital. We eliminated film three or four years ago.”
Ancell said he expects future administrations will continue to take advantage of technological advancements.
“I think the hospital will eventually be a paperless hospital,” he predicted.
The hospital has already taken significant steps in that direction, Ancell noted, as lab tests and radiology exams are now all immediately sent digitally to patient records upon completion.
While leading a hospital is full of challenges, Ancell said he has never even considered doing anything different with his life than working to improve MDMC. “I like the board, I like the people,” he said.
And he is confident MDMC’s new president, Jason Schrumpf, will continue to build a better hospital as he leads it through the completion of the Charleston health center, the new orthopedic building and whatever other projects the future holds for MDMC.
As for Ancell’s plans for his retirement, “I have some interests that I’m going to pursue,” he said. “I like to garden, research genealogy, track my investments.”
Ancell does appear to be gracefully settling into this next phase in his life — a change that is easy to embrace as he believes the hospital is in good hands.
“One thing I’m glad of is that the people that I worked with are able to stay here and continue the work we started,” Ancell said. “I knew the people that were here would be keeping their jobs and continuing in their roles. I think that’s a very important consideration because there are wonderful people here. It made it easier to retire when I knew everything wasn’t going to be disrupted.”