The door to healthcare was opened by her background in public accounting, but it is far more than the numbers that added up to Lisa Casteel becoming chief financial officer and assistant administrator of Henry County Medical Center in Paris.
Her desire to apply all of her talents and skills to make a difference in her job and community is what drives Casteel.
After graduating from the University of Memphis as an accounting major in 1989, Casteel passed her Certified Public Accounting exam and went to work for public accounting firm Deloitte & Touche for two years. In 1991, her husband, a civil engineer, took a job in Shreveport, Louisiana where she worked for another public firm, KPMG until 1993. Another move landed them in Clarksville in 1994 and Casteel took the controller position with Gateway Health System, now a part of the Tennova family of facilities.
“I liked public accounting,” said Casteel, who is a native of Mercer, Tennessee. “But it involves working with lots of different clients which makes it difficult to really get in there and help them when you are just there in spurts. When we moved to Clarksville, I knew I wanted to work for an organization where I could use all my talents and skills. When I interviewed with Gateway, I really liked that it was compassionate, servant-led and focused on making difference in the community and with people. Over my eleven years there, I put in a new financial management system, worked with the IT department to install an electronic system and built a decision support department as well as a compliance department. I started as a controller overseeing just accounting and ended with accounting, decision support and compliance.”
At Gateway, Casteel was considered by her peers and administration to be very talented and was encouraged to look for a CFO position. “My mentors told me that if I wanted to continue to move up to the next level, I should look at other facilities since they knew that opportunity was not going to be available at Gateway,” said Casteel. “They were so supportive throughout my search process and knew I was interviewing at Henry County. My boss was one of my references.”
In November 2005, Casteel took over as CFO and assistant administrator at Henry County. While she has traditional CFO responsibilities, she also has operational responsibilities which include the hospitalist program, anesthesia, strategic planning and other operations as needed. “I like seeing what is happening operationally, to see the impact the business model is having,” she said. “My managerial responsibilities also grew from ten people in three departments to nearly 90 across nine departments that report directly to me.”
Casteel says although her responsibilities have grown, her management style has been a pretty consistent one of listening, mentoring and guiding, just it has grown into understanding how to solve problems collectively across the organization rather than one department. Solving an issue in one area can have a spillover effect in other areas.
Not having come from a healthcare background initially has given Casteel a different perspective. “When I started in healthcare, each department was its own, which I found to be so interesting. No one communicated with one another and I was not used to working that way,” she said. “I am one of those people who doesn’t know ‘no.’ In my division we have removed the lines and understand why we are here. We solve our problems as well as those throughout the organization. It is our culture
to work across lines and work more as a team rather than as a unit.”
While some may not see the financial side of the organization as an example of service for the hospital, Casteel does. “We aren’t clinically taking care of patients but we develop services to assist clinicians so they can do their job,” she said. “We make sure they are paid, supplies are there, all the details that mean they can be successful in their job.”
Henry County has, as many hospitals have, been employing physicians for the past two years. “This was something we were hearing was needed for recruitment purposes as well as what some physicians in the community were wanting,” said Casteel. “This is a movement in the industry that allows the doctor to focus on his/her practice, not the business side, especially with all the new regulations and documentation required.”
There is a lot going on at HCMC that Casteel says will be of great benefit to the community. “One thing that is unique for a rural hospital is our 22-bed adult and gero-psych unit. Because we are a retirement community, we are happy we can meet the needs of an elderly population,” she said. “We just launched our own durable medical equipment company since we had noticed that many of the DME companies were leaving our community or selling to others outside of our community.
A rural health clinic is being developed. “Henry County was designated a low income county in April. With that designation we can apply for additional reimbursement in Medicare and TennCare,” she said. “We hope to accomplish this with a pediatric clinic we plan to take over January 1. We also have a family practitioner clinic that would meet that definition. We are working through the regulations to complete the application process.”
Casteel earned her MBA with a concentration in healthcare from Bethel University in 2014. She is a member of the Lakeway-Paris Kiwanis Club, WestStar Leadership, Pathways Henry County, and the Tennessee Hospital Association Investment Committee.
Children are a big part of Casteel’s heart. She and her husband work with students at Bethel to teach them how to manage their financial issues in this day and age. They are active in their church as well with their son who is a high school junior in the band. Having lost their other son at the age of 12 to cancer, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital also holds a special place in the Casteel’s family’s heart, and they are avid supporters.
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