Gaelon Spradley, the new CEO of Valley View Health Center, stands outside the Chehalis clinic on Wendnesday, May 1, 2019.
As Gaelon Spradley steps into his new position as Chief Executive Officer of Valley View Health Center, he said one of his largest motivations is to understanding the center’s relationship with community partners and to seek additional partnerships.
“I started to really tune my radar for organizations that are doing a lot of the same kinds of stuff, whether it’s homeless outreach or funding housing or economic development, faith-based organizations that have healthcare options. I’m really trying to learn which ... sets of those organizations I need to partner with,” said Spradley.
Spradley’s first day working at the facility in Chehalis was on Wednesday.
He started his career in healthcare at the age of 20, when he became a hospital corpsman for the U.S. Navy. That landed him at a small hospital in Maryland for a year, followed by a few years as an infantry corpsman.
“It really sparked my interest in healthcare as a career,” he said.
During his service, Spradley began piecing together an undergraduate degree. He finished that scholastic endeavor at Cascade College — which has since shuttered its doors — in Portland. That’s where he first met and started dating his wife. Although he was raised in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, he said he now considers himself a “northwesterner.”
Since then, he’s spent a majority of his career within clinic management, including around a decade at MultiCare Health System in Tacoma. While he said he enjoyed his time there overall, he said it separated him from what he enjoys most about healthcare — connections with patients and the community. Spradley said it was a big enough system that he felt a disconnect between himself and those relationships.
He found the position at Valley View Health Center while he searched for jobs within Washington in healthcare. His wife’s family lives in Port Orchard, and they moved there to be closer to them. Spradley said he was interested in finding a job that would allow them to stay close to that area.
Spradley said one of the appealing parts of Valley View Health Center is that it deals in primary care, behavioral health and social services for people that have trouble accessing healthcare.
“Community health centers often have a reputation as … a safety net organization, and I think the board here has a desire to make it a healthcare provider for all of the community, and making sure we don’t neglect the reasons that we started Valley View, to provide services to everyone in the community,” he said.
Becoming CEO of an organization that you were recently unfamiliar with presents a couple different lenses you have to look through, he said. On one hand, he said he views himself as the new guy who’s just trying to learn the ins and outs of the job.
But on the other, as CEO, he’s looking for ways to improve the current system. He’s got an eye out for practices that could be improved — things that have traditionally been done one way, but could benefit from being done another way.
Something he’s most excited about, he said, is learning a bit more about the community partnerships that are already in play, and finding ways to improve those relationships and find more.
He’s got a keen eye out for organizations doing work that aligns with the ultimate goal of Valley View Health Center, he said.
And for his first year on the job, Spradley said he’s intent on learning about and understanding the operations of the center and its culture.
“What I hear from the board and the staff and providers at Valley View is that they like who they are, they like the small town feel, they like the sense of community as an employer,” he said.
