More patients, fewer doctors: Top Brunswick health professional ready to tackle problems

Heather King’s path into healthcare wasn’t a typical one.

At just 9 years old, she took on the role of caregiver after her mother was injured in a car accident.

“I’m always a person that if something needs to be done, I step in,” King said.

King, 47, is a North Carolina native. Going to college after high school, she said, wasn’t an option financially. At 27, she gave birth to her first child at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem.

Her experience with the labor and delivery team there reignited her passion for healthcare and King decided to go back to school. She became a certified nursing assistant and, over the last 20 years, has risen through the ranks with Novant Health.

King was named president and chief operating officer of Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center in August 2022.

“I always tell people if I can make it in leadership roles, everyone else can,” King said.

The StarNews asked King about healthcare in Brunswick County and how she hopes to address some pressing concerns.

Her responses below have been lightly edited for brevity.

You moved to Brunswick County about eight months ago. What have you identified as some of the area's primary health needs?

King: When we look at our strategic growth, we are looking three to five years out for what we think the need will be. We could not have anticipated a pandemic that would lead to all of these people working from home. If you can work from home, why would you not want to move to the beautiful beaches of Brunswick County? The influx of growth here is startling. We are starting to see some younger families coming in, but we still have a significant amount of individuals that are moving here that are at that 55 to 65 years of age who need health care. While we've been recruiting, it's hard to recruit during a pandemic. We've seen some providers to get out of health care in general. We're continuing to recruit but we got some work to do right now. It's about three months out for you to get appointments with specialists in the county.

We have a lot of opportunity to continue to expand our specialty care as well. We want to make sure that it's the right level of care for the right people. We talk a lot about care when and where you need it. And we have some work to do here. So access to care is probably the number one thing. The second is affordable housing. You know if we're trying to recruit nursing assistants and X-Ray techs, Brunswick County is starting to price people out.

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What’s your top concern for the county?

King: One of the things that concerns me and shocks me the most is the lack of behavioral health access here. Mental health, that's a big platform for me. I think that we need to really break the stigma of it. We all have either have had or know someone that's has struggled with it. And, you know, we still don't know the ramifications of COVID. Mental health was a problem well before COVID and I think it’s only escalated it.

Novant Health says just 31% of the nation’s hospitals are run by women. What do you hope your leadership means for Brunswick?

King: One of the things that I appreciate about Novant is that they really invest in female leaders. They really do focus on that and try to ensure that a woman has voice in the room. I think it's important to be able to be a female sitting at the table have your voice heard, you know, from an independent, respective way to where they go, “Oh, wow, she really knows her stuff.” What I would love to see more now, and what I'm trying to be intentional about, is also seeing some more diversity in the hospitals and in the leadership.

Brunswick is seeing a lot of growth, and with an aging population, many are concerned about a lack of doctors. What is Brunswick Medical Center doing to address that concern?

King: We actually in the next two months have a new medical office building that will open here on campus. We have one medical office now, and we're going to be moving general surgery, our family care practice and cardiac rehab infusion center into this new building, and it will more than double their clinic space to be able to see more patients a day. And then we're going to take the existing building which has OBGYN and knock out some walls, expand their clinic and then also add pediatrics. That access is going to be much easier to have it side by side. It also helps kind of resource utilization. We're trying to be intentional about the growth. And we're also recruiting for physicians.

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Brunswick has a large tourist population, especially in the summer. How does that characteristic affect healthcare in the county?

King: I think we’re trying to change the narrative from that. When we're recruiting, and we're bringing physicians in and they're like, “Well, I thought this was just, you know, 55 and up,” and I'm like, “Let me show you where we've expanded.” It's starting to have a reputation of being more than just a place to retire or just a place to take your kids on vacation.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Brunswick since taking on this role?

King: I don't think unless you live in this county you can really understand the true mass growth. It's shocking. We talk about infrastructure for healthcare, we have to start talking about infrastructure for the schools to help with the growth that we're seeing and then families coming in. It's an exciting place to be but there's so much work to be done.

Jamey Cross covers Brunswick County for the StarNews. Reach her at jbcross@gannett.com or message her on Twitter @jameybcross.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: The new president of Novant Health Brunswick ready to meet needs