New president takes helm at local hospital

Margaret Sabin was twice named one of the San Francisco Bay Area's most influential women in business. Now, as the new head of Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, she's hoping to bring some of that influence to Colorado Springs.

Sabin, 51, started a new job Monday as president and chief executive officer of the 2,600-employee health system, which includes two major hospitals, two urgent care centers and several other services. She replaces Rick O'Connell, who resigned in February, and relieves interim CEO Phil Shaw.

Sabin launched into her new role with meet-and-greets and what she characterized as her 60-day "immersion" plan: an effort to meet with physicians, community leaders, employees and others to help her hone priorities.

"Immersion, to me, means absolutely saturating yourself with culture, people's hopes and dreams, and their fears," she said in a phone interview Monday between meetings.

The Centura-owned company is the fifth health system that Sabin has run; she left a CEO post at California-based Sutter Health Partners, a lifestyle management and wellness company, to come here. She's previously led Swedish Medical Center in Englewood and Yampa Valley Medical Center in Steamboat Springs, and three of her four children were born in Colorado.

In 2003 and 2004, she was named one of the Bay Area's "100 Most Influential Women in Business" by the San Francisco Business Times.

Sabin arrives less than three months after the $207 million St. Francis Medical Center opened in northeast Colorado Springs, and just two months after employees were notified the system fell 30 percent short of its budgeted financial goals last fiscal year. Then came the economic crisis.

Despite any financial challenges, she said the health system is "strategically at an advantage" to face them.

Penrose has less market share than Memorial Health System, according to a recent study, but in the last year it has made an aggressive effort to bring new services and technologies to the region such as southern Colorado's first gynecologic oncologist and minimally invasive heart surgery.

Sabin said one priority in the system's future will be its trauma program.

She also noted that one of the greatest health care problems in the Pikes Peak region, as it is elsewhere, is the uninsured, and she hopes to partner with Memorial Health System in some way to help address the issue.

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Contact the writer: 636-0198 or brian.newsome@gazette.com