New health care leader talks about the future

The temporary leader at Kalispell Regional Healthcare is using his background as a businessman to help steer the valley’s largest employer.

On Jan. 25, Curt Lund, 76, posed for a photo in the office he intends to work out of for the next year.

Its former occupant, Velinda Stevens, died on Jan. 22, at 64 after living with breast cancer for years. She lead the organization for nearly two decades. Stevens selected Lund as her temporary replacement as she sat around her kitchen table with the organization’s leadership team just weeks before her death.

The hospital search committee will begin meeting in the next few weeks to discuss how to define the job position Stevens’ left behind.

On Jan. 25, Stevens’ nameplate still hung next to Lund’s office door. Lund adjusted his employee name tag on his suit jacket before looking around the room.

Out the window, one of Stevens’ final projects was beginning to take shape as construction workers walked along metal beams that would eventually make up the hospital’s pediatric center.

The inside of the room was nearly empty. A few items Stevens left behind remained on the bookshelf, including a coffee mug that said “the pity train has left the station. Suck it up and move on.”

“I won’t make a lot of changes, don’t need the frills,” Lund said. “This is temporary, I’ll most likely only be here for about a year.”

LUND GREW up in North Dakota along the Missouri river. There, he met the woman he would marry. The duo wrote to each other faithfully each week for four years while Lund attended the University of Minnesota — returning to his parents’ roots.

They married the day after Lund graduated college and created a home in a Minnesota neighborhood, where they stayed for 32 years.

Lund built a life around business.

After graduating college, he worked for an international accounting firm for nearly a decade. In 1972, he became president of a major construction company. In 1982, Lund opened a certified public account firm that specialized in mergers and acquisitions.

When the owner of National Flood Services in Kalispell wanted to retire, he contracted Lund to help sell the business.

“The owner kept rejecting the potential owners I would find, so finally I said, ‘What is going on?’” Lund said.

Lund said the owner had a simple answer: “I want you to buy it.”

To Lund’s surprise, his wife, Mary Ann, spoke in favor of the move to the mountains. When the couple arrived in Kalispell in 1996, National Flood Services had 40 employees. Six years later, it had more than 700.

By 2006, Lund and his wife were set to retire. At first they tried “the snowbird thing” — they spent most of the year in Montana and migrated to Arizona in the winter.

“We did not like that,” Lund said. “We came back deciding we wanted to get involved in the community.”

Mary Ann began volunteering at United Way and Lund worked as a CASA volunteer.

His role was to get to know children who had been thrown into the court system due to a turbulent situation at home. After spending time with them, their family and social workers, Lund advised a judge what could be the child’s best home.

Lund worked with 11 children over four years. Each case was long and emotional. But it gave him unique insight into the importance of a healthy home — physically and mentally.

In 2011, Lund joined the Kalispell Regional Board of Trustees, which he now chairs.

“To be honest with you, I’ve been on boards, and there’s nothing more boring,” he said. “So I told them that I wouldn’t be the typical board member.”

Lund began attending the Performance Improvement Committee meetings, where medical directors voiced performance improvement projects. Soon, he became chairman of the committee.

There, medical professionals voiced their concern with high hospital readmission rates which pointed to an issue of people unable to manage their health care.

Lund began to believe the problem couldn’t be fixed inside hospital walls because doctors typically can’t follow patients home to see what’s contributing to a problem.

He saw the need for an organization that connects patients to services that could help them stay healthy — whether it meant helping them move into better housing, getting nutritious food, or simply transportation to a doctor appointment.

“It was a new approach. Sitting right at this table, several people said ‘what’s your model?’” Lund said as he sat at the conference table in his new office. “I said, ‘good grief, I don’t have a model I’m making it up as we go.”

Roughly three years ago, Lund created that nonprofit, ASSIST. In 2016, the organization joined Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

“That experience has helped me understand all facets of health care, I think that’s what’s prepared me for doing what I’m doing now,” he said.

LUND met Stevens his first day serving as a board member roughly six years ago.

“I knew of her, because of her significant impact at this hospital,” he said. “My wife was a patient here for 10 years before she passed away, I knew the hospital well from that standpoint.”

Lund said Stevens had the ability to understand risk, both from a medical and a business standpoint — something he said he hoped the next president would carry.

He said since his background has been business, Stevens picked Dr. Doug Nelsen with Kalispell Regional to shore up the medical side of the administrative team.

Just two days into his new position, Lund described meeting Stevens and her husband in their home nearly two weeks ago.

“We talked about what kind of a legacy she wanted to leave, we talked about naming certain things — those will be coming up in the future,” he said with a smile.

Lund said his role at the hospital will be managing major projects that would distract everyday efforts.

He’s currently working through negotiations with a clinic that requested to affiliate with the hospital. In upcoming weeks, he will work on preparing the hospital’s budget, review proposed legislative bills that could impact health care in the state and oversee the hospital’s major construction projects.

Lund said at 76 years old, he won’t put his name in the hat for the full-time leadership position. He said for now, the focus is maintaining Stevens’ vision of growing access to health care throughout Montana.

After he steps down as interim CEO, Lund said he’ll finish his term as a hospital Board of Trustee.

“It’s a nine-year term and I’ll have four more years to go,” Lund said. “It takes a long while to understand this business, that’s why it’s such a long commitment. But it’s rewarding.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.