Executive Insider: John Myers

While no stranger to holding C-suite roles in health care administration, the newest position for John Myers is his biggest: president of Mercy Springfield Communities.

Less than two years after arriving in the Queen City from his longtime home in Kansas City, Myers is leading Springfield’s second-largest employer, which officials say has a 9,238-person workforce and includes rural hospitals in Aurora, Carthage, Cassville and Lebanon, along with around 225 clinics.

Myers, formerly the health system’s chief operating officer since August 2022, was promoted last month to president. He succeeded David Argueta, who was named president of Mercy Southwest Missouri, a region that includes the Springfield market. A replacement will be hired for his former position, Myers said.

Myers says the president role is a more external-facing position than when he was COO, which means more public appearances at community events representing Mercy. As far as his duties, Myers said he remains responsible for monitoring functions of the health system, such as daily operations and finance.

“It’s been really a natural transition,” he says. “Because David is still here, we are doing it in a very natural way because we’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years to really build relationships.”

Myers grew up in a small farming community in Nebraska and earned his Master of Business Administration from Regis University in Denver, Colorado, in 2009. That was preceded by a bachelor’s degree in health care management in 2004 from Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas.

While several members of his family – including his mother and sister – are nurses, Myers says health care wasn’t what he expected to pursue as a career. He recalls his mom occasionally taking him to the small hospital where she was employed, and there he received encouragement from staff to consider working in health care.

“Honestly, I fell into it in college,” he said, adding he studied nuclear medicine, a specialized area of radiology that uses radioactive tracers to examine organ function and structure. “I had a couple friends that were in the program, and just once I got into it, it was exciting. It’s heavily science-based, physics-based. I enjoy those fields.”

But even in college, he thought he’d become a farmer like his father.

“My full intention was to get through college and probably go back to farming and ranching,” he says. “At the age of 22 when I finished [at Ottawa University], I’m like, ‘Yeah, there’s more to see than that right now.’ And I just followed the path, I guess.”

Prior to Mercy, the entirety of Myers’s health care career was in Kansas City, where he initially began working for nearly nine years for The Woodlands, Texas-based US Oncology Inc. At the time he exited, he was its director of clinical services and product line development.

“I enjoyed the aspect of leadership, developing others, growing, and quickly migrated from more of a clinical-type role to an administrative role,” he said, noting his time with Mercy was preceded by over six years working at HCA Research Medical Center in Kansas City as its chief operating officer. “I was a service line executive for several different service lines – cardiology, radiology, lab – and that’s where I learned the workings of a hospital.”

When Mercy’s COO position came open two years ago, Myers says Argueta – who he knew informally through mutual industry contacts – reached out. At that point, Myers was a married father of three who hadn’t moved from Kansas City since starting his family.

“While I’ve worked for various organizations, we’ve never moved before,” he says, noting he and wife Danielle had raised their children, Aishlynn, Madilynn and Johnnie, in the same house. “So, making a move was a really big deal.”

Myers says he researched Mercy before considering a move, noting he was impressed with the health system’s commitment to quality and safety. Mercy Hospital Springfield recently earned an ‘A’ grade for spring 2024 from The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit watchdog for patient safety, according to a news release. It marked the third straight “A” grade for the hospital. Leapfrog assigns letter grades to hospitals based on over 30 measures of errors, accidents, injuries and infections as well as the systems the institutions have in place to prevent them.  

“They’re all here for a purpose, and you can feel that,” he says of Mercy staff. “You can feel it’s more than just a paycheck here, and that goes down to our frontline co-workers. I remember when I interviewed here, that was very palpable, and so that’s what was unique from the community aspect.”

Previously as COO and now as president, Myers says workforce shortages continue to be a challenge for the health care industry, adding Mercy isn’t immune. The company’s local employee count has grown roughly 8% from its reported 8,551 total in August 2023, according to Springfield Business Journal list research.

“It’s a fun challenge to have, but how do you manage the growth? We’re recruiting a lot of physicians. We’re bringing on a lot of nurses, a lot of clinicians,” he says, adding growth is also in areas such as hospital admissions and clinic volumes. “So, when you’re growing rapidly, you can easily outkick your coverage from an expense standpoint if you really don’t watch how you manage that growth.”

Chief Nursing Officer Marie Moore, who was promoted to that position around the same time Myers came on board, says she now reports to him as president.

“I update him with all of our progress around nursing operations, our emergency room performance, a lot of our throughput and length-of-stay work,” she says, noting Myers collaborates across the organization to drive the best outcome for patients. “He has a very collaborative style. He’s also very thoughtful and does a great job at soliciting feedback from several teams to have a good, full vision of different perspectives as we move forward on a decision.”

On a lighter note, Moore notes Myers also is a model of consistency when it comes to punctuality at the hospital.

“It’s actually an internal competition. I think it’s only happened two times in the entire two years that we’ve worked together that I have beat him,” she says of arriving to work before him, noting she resides in Branson. “I feel like he kind of has it easy. The playing field isn’t exactly level, but that’s OK. I’m willing to work harder.”

Away from work, Myers is kept busy with family activities, shuttling children to sporting competitions and practices.

“My wife really runs the show. She does an awesome job,” he says. “I try to be there as much as possible. My weekends, I really try to give to my family.”

An avid reader, Myers is drawn more by nonfiction historical literature over health care-related content. Although he’s a Winston Churchill fan, his most recent book covered the history of Standard Oil Co.

The outdoors is another draw for Myers, who says his wife’s parents live at Lake of the Ozarks.

“All three of our kids love to fish, so every weekend we’re doing something,” he says, noting the family also frequents Table Rock Lake. “We’ve just been here for two years, so we still have a lot of exploring left to do. It’s a beautiful place.”