In this episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, host Dan Collard sits down with Mike Schafer, CEO of Spooner Health in Spooner, Wisconsin, for a conversation about what sustained high performance looks like over time.

Schafer has led Spooner Health since 1990. When he partnered with the Studer Group in 2009, his organization was at the 12th percentile for employee engagement. Within two years, they had hit the 94th. For the last three years, they have held at the 99th. This is an impressive turnaround story. But it’s also a staying-the-course story, and those are rarer and harder to tell.

Schafer brought that story to the inaugural Rewiring Healthcare: Foundation to Future conference in Atlanta earlier this year, where attendees called him one of the most humble and self-aware CEOs they had ever seen on a stage. This episode gives listeners who were not in the room a chance to hear it.

Listeners will learn:

• Why Spooner Health’s five-year engagement plan happened in two years, and what made the difference
• How employee-written standards of excellence became the cultural backbone of the organization and still hold today
• Why transparency with data, including the uncomfortable numbers, builds more trust than protecting people from them
• What Schafer tells every new hire at orientation and why storytelling is now central to how he does it
• How the rewiring concept gave a high-performing organization a framework for continuing to improve without starting over
• Why investing in external development matters even when an organization is already at the top of its game

This is a conversation for any healthcare leader who wants to know what it looks like to build something that lasts.

About Mike Schafer

Michael D. Schafer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FACHE has over 40 years of professional experience working in rural hospitals.  Mike has been the CEO of Spooner Health, a Critical Access Hospital, since 1990. Prior to that Mike served as the administrator of two rural hospital/nursing home combination facilities in northeast Montana and central Minnesota. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN in 1985, majoring in Business Administration/Hospital Administration and Political Science and his Master’s in Healthcare Administration from the University of Minnesota in 2003.  He is actively involved in the community, having been a member of the Lions Club, Spooner Area Chamber of Commerce, including serving on the Board of Directors for 9 years with one of those as the President, a founding member of Leadership Washburn County, serving on the Board for 6 years with 3 of those as the President, and as a board member and/or coach in youth hockey, baseball, softball and football. He has served as a Board member for Regional Hospice for the past 30 years, with 16 of those years as the Vice-President.  

Mike has been an active member of the Wisconsin Hospital Association, where he has served 20 years on the Board of Directors and is a past Board Chairman.  He has also served on the Board as a representative to the American Hospital Association Regional Policy Board 5.  He has chaired the WHA Workforce Development Council as well as having served on the Rural Health Council.  Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors, is chair of the Audit and Investment Committee, and serves on the Public Policy Council.  In 2024 Mike was awarded the WHA Distinguished Service Award and was the American Hospital Association’s Grass Root Champion. Mike has also been recognized by Beckers Health Review as a rural or Critical Access Hospital “CEO to Know” on multiple occasions.

In his role as CEO, he has implemented a partnership with Studer Group, now Healthcare Plus Solutions Group, to enhance employee’s skills for the achievement of organizational and departmental goals.  Under Mike’s leadership Spooner Health has attained top decile employee engagement as measured by Press Ganey for the past 15 years, including achieving the 99^th percentile the past 3 years.  As CEO, Mike promotes high quality patient care and continuous improvement. Mike led Spooner Health through two major building projects at their old site, including a nursing home expansion and remodel in the early 1990’s and a hospital expansion and remodel in the mid 1990’s, as well as through the planning and construction of the current replacement hospital, which was occupied in May, 2016.