New president says Jane Phillips is done being the hospital that “just sends people to Tulsa”
Andy Dossett | The Wiley Post
Published June 11. 2026
For years, Bartians had an unspoken rule: If something serious happens, you're probably headed to Tulsa.
Tanner Holt, president of Ascension St. John Jane Phillips Medical Center, has heard it.
He has heard the stories about outdated equipment. He has heard patients' frustration that the hospital had been neglected. He has heard the community skepticism about whether Bartlesville's only hospital was being treated like a full-fledged medical center or merely a feeder system for Tulsa.
Seven months into his role as president of Jane Phillips Medical Center, Holt said that the mindset is changing.
Andy Dossett | The Wiley Post
“I feel an immense amount of pressure to change culture and perception, and to improve patient experience,” Holt said.
That pressure, he said, is not theoretical. It shows up in patient surveys, emergency room wait times, physician recruitment, Google reviews, equipment requests and conversations with residents who are not shy about telling him what they think.
Holt, who came to Bartlesville from Texas, said the hospital is trying to move away from what he described as an old “hub-and-spoke” model — one that pushed too much care toward Ascension's larger medical center in Tulsa.
Some highly specialized services will always need to go there, he said. Jane Phillips is not trying to become a place for complex brain surgery or open-heart procedures. But Holt said plenty of “bread and butter” care should be available in Bartlesville.
“There were things that really shouldn't have been getting sent to the medical center,” Holt said.
From hub-and-spoke to "solar system.”
Holt said the shift began before he arrived, under Ascension Oklahoma leadership, but his job has been to apply it locally.
Rather than treating Tulsa as the automatic destination for anything beyond basic care, Holt said Ascension's newer approach is more like a “solar system.” Where each hospital operates like its own independent planet, with something to offer, yet is part of a larger system that supports the others.
For Bartlesville, that means figuring out what services make sense here, what the community needs and where the hospital can safely grow.
Holt said that was not always the case.
"The sense that I got, and from what I've heard anecdotally, is that Bartlesville and Jane Phillips were a bit neglected," he said.
That neglect, he said, showed up in several ways: retiring physicians not being replaced quickly enough, aging equipment, limited investment in technology and a hospital culture that had to fight the perception that people were better off leaving town for care.
Changing that, Holt said, will take more than a few new machines and a speech at the Chamber of Commerce.
"Culture takes time," he said. "Changing perception takes time."
Still, he believes the early signs are there.
Robots, beds and the not-so-small matter of investment
One of the clearest examples is robotic surgery.
Jane Phillips received its first surgical robot in late 2024. It was not brand new — Holt described it as a hand-me-down from the Tulsa medical center — but it worked, and local surgeons quickly put it to use.
Very quickly.
Holt said the robot became the most highly utilized surgical robot across Ascension's system of roughly 80 to 90 hospitals. General surgery, gynecology and urology cases all competed for time on the machine. Demand was so high that surgeons only had access to it every other week.
That, Holt said, meant some patients received robotic surgery while others had traditional laparoscopic procedures, even when robotic surgery would have been preferred.
So Jane Phillips added a second robot — this one brand-new and top-of-the-line.
The goal is not to make the hospital sound futuristic for its own sake. Holt said robotic surgery is now part of modern surgical care. It allows for smaller incisions, better precision and, in many cases, faster recovery.
At a recent demonstration, a surgeon used the robot to operate on a banana, cutting it open and stitching it back together. Holt said one man in the audience had undergone hernia surgery just two days earlier and was already walking around comfortably enough to attend the event.
“That's the quality-of-life piece," Holt said.
The hospital also received 60 new patient beds, replacing beds that Holt said were 15 to 17 years old. The new beds include safety technology aimed at reducing patient falls, a metric hospitals, Holt said, are closely judged on.
Ascension is in the middle of a multiyear, systemwide equipment refresh, Holt said, and Jane Phillips was the first hospital in the system to receive the new beds as part of that effort.
Patient scores are becoming the scoreboard
Holt talks often about patient experience, not in the vague way hospital administrators sometimes do, but as a measurable business reality.
The hospital tracks Net Promoter Score, or NPS, based on patient surveys. Holt said Jane Phillips receives about 500 surveys each month across its departments.
Over the past several years, those scores have climbed. Holt said the hospital's NPS was around 58% to 59% in previous fiscal years, rose to 68.9% this fiscal year and has been around 72% over the past six months.
He wants it higher.
“I'd love for us to be at 75-plus every single month,” he said.
Jane Phillips’ Leapfrog safety grades also tell a more complicated — and more honest — story about the work ahead.
The hospital received an “A” in fall 2023 and spring 2024, slipped to a “B” in fall 2024, dropped to a “C” in spring 2025 and climbed back to a “B” in fall 2025. In 2026, it earned another “A.”
So no, it has not been a straight-line march to perfection. But the latest grade gives Holt something concrete to point to as he talks about turning the hospital's reputation around.
Jane Phillips was also recognized by Becker's as one of the cleanest hospitals in the state, based on patient survey data.
Holt said that those are not awards Ascension gave itself.
“Everybody gets rated on the same metrics,” he said.
Then there is the more public-facing scoreboard: Google reviews.
When Holt arrived, he said Jane Phillips had a 3.2-star rating. Seven months later, it was at 3.7. His goal is to get to four stars by the end of the year.
People may roll their eyes at Google reviews, but Holt does not. He said patients use them the same way they use reviews for restaurants, hotels and everything else.
“We earn business,” he said.
The ER is moving faster
The emergency department has been another focus.
For many residents, Holt said the ER is the front door of the hospital. If that experience is slow, cold or frustrating, it shapes how people view the entire facility.
Holt said Jane Phillips previously had some of the slowest turnaround times for patients who came to the ER but did not need admission. The average door-to-discharge time for those patients was around 240 minutes, or about four hours.
That has been cut to roughly 140-150 minutes.
That improvement did not come from one change, Holt said. It came from several: a new medical director in the emergency department, recruiting emergency physicians, improving radiology turnaround times, speeding up lab work and making the overall operation more efficient.
Holt said shaving off an hour and a half matters.
“That's an additional hour and a half that you're not with your family, that you're not at work,” he said.
He also said efficiency only gets the hospital so far. Staff members still have to communicate well and treat patients with care.
“You could be the nicest, most humble, best-bedside-manner person in the entire world,” Holt said. “But if we aren’t good, efficient operators, if we’re making people wait, if we’re not communicating, we’re never going to improve our patient experience.”
Recruiting doctors, not excuses
Holt said one of his top priorities from the start has been recruitment.
The hospital has added or is working to add new providers in several areas, including OB-GYN, family medicine, podiatry, pulmonology, orthopedics, neurology, interventional cardiology and ENT.
Some are signed. Some have given verbal commitments. Some are still being pursued.
Holt said the hospital has recruited a new OB-GYN set to start soon and a new family medicine physician, who is completing residency in Tulsa and is expected to practice in Bartlesville. The hospital also has commitments or active recruitment efforts involving additional family medicine doctors, including physicians with young families who Holt hopes will live in the community.
That matters to him.
He said Bartlesville is not Austin, Dallas or even Tulsa, and recruiting physicians here takes work. But he sees that as part of the pitch.
“I’ve been married 10 years, and I’ve got three little girls,” Holt said. “Bartlesville is awesome.”
Primary care is a major need. Holt said even with several new family medicine providers, the community still has a deficit. He is already thinking about where to place future primary care clinics, possibly away from the hospital campus and deeper into the community.
“More and more, primary care is trying to take it to the community,” he said.
Specialty care is also part of the plan. Holt said a new foot and ankle surgeon is expected to come to Bartlesville through Platte River Foot and Ankle. He said the doctor will bring a more specialized set of procedures to town, potentially reducing the number of patients who have to travel to Tulsa for certain foot and ankle care.
The hospital is also working to add pulmonology coverage after more than a year without a pulmonologist in the community.
Rebuilding trust outside the hospital walls
Holt knows hospital perception is not only built inside exam rooms.
It is built at community events, in sponsorships, in conversations with business leaders, on social media and, yes, in local gossip threads where one bad post can travel faster than any official announcement.
He said staff members sometimes feel beaten down by the perception that the community dislikes the hospital. That, he said, can become a cycle: bad stories hurt morale, poor morale can affect care, and poor care creates more bad stories.
Breaking that cycle requires investment in both employees and patients.
“It’s investment, taking care of the employees as best you can, providing good care, giving them the tools and resources they need to do their job,” Holt said.
He has also tried to make Jane Phillips more visible in the community. Since arriving, Holt said the hospital has sponsored many community events.
“This is very family-oriented, community-centric,” Holt said.
He said the goal is to “reingratiate” the hospital with Bartlesville — to show up, shake hands, answer questions and make sure people know Jane Phillips is not hiding behind a corporate logo.
A long-term play
Holt does not pretend every problem is solved.
There are still services that lose money. There are still patients who have bad experiences. There are still billing frustrations, insurance headaches and the daily financial pressure that comes with running a hospital on thin margins.
He also knows skepticism will not disappear overnight.
But he argues the direction is clear: better patient scores, faster ER care, new equipment, more physicians and a hospital that is trying to act like a permanent part of Bartlesville’s future.
That includes difficult decisions, such as the planned transition of Ascension St. John Nowata from a critical access hospital to a rural emergency hospital.
Holt said the move is meant to preserve emergency and outpatient services in Nowata while eliminating underused inpatient beds. He acknowledged the decision has been difficult for the community, but said the alternative could have been worse.
For Bartlesville, Holt said the picture is different. Jane Phillips is financially healthier, growing services and receiving investment.
Holt said he came to Bartlesville looking for more than another stop on a resume. He has moved several times in his career, but said this job feels different. His family is here. His third child was born in the hospital. He said he is planting roots.
“I’m not in it for the short haul,” Holt said. “Seven months, there’s been a lot of good change, and I just want to continue to move forward.”
