SALT LAKE CITY — Marc Harrison was not much more than 8 or 9 years old when he asked his father, a surgeon in Pittsburgh, to name his favorite hospital to work in.
To his surprise, his father named Homestead Hospital — an aging facility in one of the worst parts of city, an old steel town just across the river.
Harrison recalled asking his father why.
"He said, 'The patients there, if I don't go there, what's going to happen to them?'" Harrison said. "'At the other hospitals, if I don't go there, they'll be fine.'"
That sense of purpose — and service — stayed with Harrison as he rose in the ranks from a young pediatric critical care doctor in Cleveland to the newest CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, with one week under his belt as of Sunday.
Harrison, 52, is tasked with leading the largest private employer in the state — and largest health care provider in the Intermountain West — through a time of significant turmoil and rapid change in the health care industry.
In many ways, it is a homecoming for Harrison.
He moved to Salt Lake City the day after he married his wife — an accomplished physician herself. Harrison completed his residency and fellowship in pediatric critical care at University Hospital and Primary Children's Hospital, where their first child was born.
Harrison, who jokes that he would have liked to be a kayaking or river rafting guide in a second life, chose pediatrics because he wanted to help people who were unable to advocate for themselves.
"You don't go into pediatrics for the glory," he said.
Eventually, the Harrisons found their way to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
That's where Harrison "stumbled" into a leadership role after he helped find the money to hire needed staff in the pediatrics department by redesigning how they did their billing.
From there, Harrison established a dedicated office for medical operations, which he ran for years until he was asked to lead the opening of the first American-style academic medical center in the Middle East — Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.
Dr. Tomislav Mihaljevic, a friend and colleague who first met Harrison at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, described him then and now as a person dedicated to the idea that health care is ultimately about serving others.
When meeting new colleagues, “you tend to be impressed at the very beginning, and as time goes by, you tend to uncover the deficiencies," Mihaljevic said. “That was the exact opposite when it comes to Marc and myself.”
Growing a team of 55 people to approximately 3,500 employees was not easy for Harrison, particularly with Arab Spring causing turmoil in the region. But Harrison did it, according to Mihaljevic.
Harrison was known not only for his effectiveness but also for his genuine concern for those under his leadership, Mihaljevic said.
He said Harrison was known to personally inspect the corporate accommodations given to the lowest-paid staffers to ensure they were suitable.
As an avid cyclist, Harrison also championed physical activity and healthy living. Under his leadership, the hospital donated dozens of free bicycles to locals for them to use in the off-season at the nearby Formula 1 racetrack.
To this day, the vast majority of bicycles used at the circuit are Cleveland Clinic bicycles, Mihaljevic said.
The seven-time Ironman has also managed to find the time to compete in a triathlon every year, without fail, since 1982, even while battling bladder cancer.
"He is one of the very few people that I know who truly embodies and follows his own principles," Mihaljevic said.
Harrison said he was gearing up to head the expansion of Cleveland Clinic into London when he learned of the opportunity at Intermountain. The opportunity was too good to pass up.
Although the health care industry is going through major changes, Intermountain is better positioned than most due to predecessors like former CEO Dr. Charles Sorenson, who retired earlier this month, Harrison said.
"Mayo (Clinic) and Cleveland do things beautifully, but I really stack Intermountain’s ability to manage populations and think carefully about reducing variability and improving quality up there with anyone,” he said.
That includes widely-regarded projects such as embedding mental health into their primary care, a program started over a decade ago.
As CEO, Harrison will likely be dogged by cynicism about the health care industry, rising health care costs and uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act.
But ask him and he’ll tell you there's never been a better time for the industry.
"We never talked about patient experience when I went to med school — never," Harrison said. "We rarely talked about safety and quality. We virtually never talked about cost. And now people really care about all these things that are really important."
He pointed to origins of Intermountain Healthcare, in 1974, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated 15 hospitals to the community on the condition that a not-for-profit organization would be formed to operate them.
Harrison said he is proud that even today, SelectHealth, Intermountain's insurance arm, is the only provider in the individual marketplace in 20 out of 27 counties in Utah — a marketplace that several carriers have abandoned.
"Is everything perfect? No. But man, we’re trying," Harrison said. “Other people have pulled out, and I think we're hanging in there because it feels like the right thing to do."
Intermountain's original mandate "was to be a model health care system and to make care affordable for the people they serve,” Harrison added. “Those are pretty good things to live by, now and in the future.”
Email: dchen@deseretnews.com
Twitter: DaphneChen_