2022 Health Care Champions Administrator: Ellen Hammock

Now in her second stint as an administrator for CoxHealth, Ellen Hammock says her role as vice president of provider services can be summed up as recruiting and retaining health care providers for the city’s largest employer. It’s an important job.

“I am responsible for ensuring that our providers are fairly yet competitively compensated for their work and that their other benefit needs are met,” she says, noting that includes physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

“Essentially, my team is tasked with keeping our providers here and happy,” she says.

That means constantly planning for the community’s growing needs, as well as the anticipated turnover and retirements of the health care system’s physicians and advance practice workers.

“With a nationwide physician shortage becoming more real every day, we have to plan far in advance and do even more to attract physicians to our community,” she says. “As this community continues to grow, so do the health care needs. There are emerging needs of a growing elderly population as well as new needs for the very young.”

Hammock also helps ensure physicians have the tools they need to provide quality care, including advancements in technology.

Hammock has worked with CoxHealth since 2008 – save for a year when she served as director of development at Drury University beginning in 2012. She says she advocates for health care providers, who, like some of their patients, also need professional and emotional support – something highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Health organizations were even part of Hammock’s career prior to her arrival at CoxHealth. She had served six years as executive director of Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks, and a prior three years with a pair of chapters of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Dr. Timothy Jones, president of Cox Medical Group and a longtime co-worker of Hammock, says he’s always observed her passion and work ethic to promote and advocate for the betterment of health in the Ozarks.

“As vice president of provider services, she has a direct impact on our entire physician and provider group within CoxHealth,” Jones says. “Since taking this role just over two years ago, she has managed to wrangle over 700 providers into a cohesive group while helping guide them through the ever-changing landscape of health care.”

Outside the workplace, Hammock says much of her community volunteerism over the past 15-plus years centered around her daughter’s interests, which led to involvement in the Springfield Catholic Schools system. That included eight years of service on the schools’ development board and six years on the board of Catholic Campus Ministries.

“At this point in life, I am now able to focus on other important community needs and have the pleasure of serving as the president of the board of trustees for The Kitchen Inc.,” Hammock says.

She adds that she’s also board president for the Ozarks Health Advocacy Foundation, which provides grants to local health-related nonprofit organizations.