Dr. Huy Nguyen and his parents escaped from Vietnam as the North Vietnamese army marched on Saigon and the south, in 1975.

Nguyen, then seven, and his parents relocated to Washington D.C. where they built the American Dream brick by brick.

“We owned gas stations, dry cleaners, and an egg roll factory at one point,” Nguyen said with a laugh, “So my dad, like a lot of immigrants that took hold in this country, was very focused on customer service. I mean, that’s how you break into this country, right? You provide a service and you do it well, that people come back to you. Well, how I run this hospital? I feel like I’m growing up to be my old man.”

Nguyen knows about service. Before he became the CEO of the doctor-owned North Walton Doctor’s Hospital, he served his country as a Navy Medical Officer in Iraq. After his time in uniform, which included time as the senior medical officer at NAS Pensacola, he worked in Northwest Florida Hospitals. “I was proud to be a part of the mission,” he added.

Getting Medical Care in Walton County.

Nguyen’s new mission is getting medical care in Northern Walton County, where the previous hospital closed in 2005. The closure left the growing community without a hospital. The new hospital’s opening times neatly coincide with the two-and-a-half-year anniversary of the previous hospital’s closure.

Nguyen, who possesses his dad’s entrepreneurial spirit, teamed up with other doctors and DeFuniak area philanthropists to invest capital to buy and update the old hospital.

This hospital, which will open for business on September 18, is the first physician-owned and managed hospital to open in the United States since 2005.

The ownership structure means that the doctors have no corporate quotas to meet, initiatives to comply with, or administrators to wrangle while providing patient care. “I don’t answer to someone in Nashville or New York,” Nguyen, who serves as a physician and CEO of the hospital, said, “I think as medicine becomes more corporatized, becomes bigger – we lose the essential relationship – the essential relationship of healthcare is one human being caring for another human being.”

Mechanics of a New Hospital

The owners/doctors of North Walton Doctors’ Hospital didn’t just slap a new coat of paint on the ways and a new sign on the building. Dr. Nguyen says the overhaul was expensive and comprehensive. “I’m not just talking about cosmetics and new floors, the walls. Being painted and so forth,” Nguyen said, “All of the equipment here, every piece of it, is brand new. We did not keep a single piece of equipment from the old hospital. Everything in the radiology lab is brand new. Everything in the ER is brand new or the same. So we, as a community of physicians, didn’t simply want just to change the light bulb and put up the ‘Open for Business’ sign.”

Dealing With Negative Media Reports

Recent local media reports – driven by a press release from Joe Zaurzaur about a local medical doctor accused of mistakenly removing a liver from a patient instead of a spleen. Some media reports noted Doctor Thomas Shankovsky, the physician accused of performing the botched surgery that led to the death of a patient, had privileges both at Ascension Sacred Heart of the Emerald Coast, where the deadly surgery took place, and North Walton Doctors’ Hospital.

Nguyen says that is not true – he said Shankovsky was in the standard vetting process NWDH performs before adding doctors onto the team, and had not received privileges at the DeFuniak Springs hospital. “I’m not going to deny that he was in the process of getting his credential,” Dr. Nguyen said, “[Medicine] is a very complex field, and things happen, the key to the institution is to be responsive.”

He says the incident was tragic. He hopes it will provides a learning opportunity for other doctors, heatlhcare providers and hospitals in the area. “Nothing will be swept under the rug, because that’s how great institutions grow,” Nguyen said, “We learn and grow not from what we do right – or our victories. We learn and grow from what we do wrong and the obstacles we face.”

Opening Day

The hospital officially opens to the public for business on September 18 – although the hospital employees are up and running and have already taken a couple of patients.

The hospital’s website boasts a total of 43 medical professionals on staff. Their specialties include emergency services, anesthesia, podiatry, orthopedic surgery, and dentistry.

The hospital has a 24/7 ER, a helicopter landing area, and an on-site pharmacy.