Matthew Fry taking over at Freeman Health System
Leadership of Joplin's largest employer traded hands Monday as Paula Baker, president and CEO of Freeman Health System for the past 14 years, passed the torch to her successor, Matt Fry.
Fry, who last served as president and CEO of St. John's Hospital and St. John's Children's Hospital in Springfield, Illinois, assumes leadership duties at Freeman on Tuesday.
'I feel great. I'm ready for tomorrow,' Fry said Monday. 'I have quite a bit of energy, so I'm really looking forward to joining this system, and I think we have tremendous potential. It's already a storied enterprise with 100 years of legacy, and I think we have a ton of potential to take this to new heights.'
Fry said he has spent the past month since moving to Joplin meeting with Freeman officials and physicians as well as working with Baker to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible.
'If I showed you my phone, you'd see a list of top initiatives about 20 deep right now,' Fry said. 'Really, what it comes down to is the first 30 days about meeting the team, getting out, meeting the physicians, getting immersed in the community, learning as much history as I can about the organization — warts and all — so we can better understand how we strategize going forward. I think over the course of the next couple of months, we'll want to sit down and formulate a strategic plan and that will invariably lead to other subgroup strategic plans that we'll draft together as a team.'
Baker took a farewell tour of Freeman Hospital West on Friday.
'Today is an amazing day for me, and it's bittersweet,' she said. 'Although I'm very excited about a new chapter in my life, I find it very difficult to say goodbye at the same time. All the people at Freeman who have been so wonderful to work with over the past 14 years, it's really difficult to say goodbye to them. But it won't be goodbye because I'll still be around and I'll be so excited to see all the accomplishments yet to come at Freeman Health System.'
Baker said she has countless memories from her time at Freeman, but some stand out:
'One was when we opened the (Bill and Virginia Leffen) Autism Center (in 2007) and we began that transformation in the lives of children living on the spectrum, and seeing those children come as well as their families, and after a period of time seeing their development and progress,' Baker said. 'That will forever be a big part of my heart.
'Then secondly, although it's not a real positive thing, but our staff's response both to the tornado (in 2011) and to the COVID-19 pandemic (in 2020). Those were difficult times — both uncharted waters — but I have always been and will always be immensely proud of the way the staff stepped forward to take care of those issues for our community and region.'
On Monday, Fry said he's already learned firsthand the care that hospital staff, physicians and technicians put into the patients who come through Freeman's doors.
He also noted that a relative who moved to Joplin with his family had to be admitted to Freeman Hospital West through the emergency department last week and was still in the hospital as of Monday. That experience gave him great insight to 'the inner workings' of Freeman.
'They don't know who I am, they don't know what I'm here for,' Fry said. 'But if every patient in Joplin and the surrounding communities who comes to Freeman gets this level of care, I feel really, really good about where this organization is.'
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