WINDBER — In announcing his pending retirement last week, Windber Medical Center President F. Nicholas Jacobs barely missed a step in his relentless march to bring innovation.

Expanded emergency and obstetrics departments and construction of “the ultimate education center” top his current agenda. They continue more than a decade of transforming the small town hospital into a showcase of state-of-the-art medicine and holistic alternatives.

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Jacobs took time to reflect on the hospital’s challenges and achievements during an exclusive interview with The Tribune-Democrat.

When he started at Windber in 1997, Jacobs found that one challenge of running a small community hospital in the shadow of larger competitors is creating a unique brand to attract patients.

The former Windber Hospital has a storied history of doing just that. Sixty years ago, the rich and famous came to Windber for thyroid surgery. Betty Grable and Arthur Godfrey were among notable patients.

“Two of our surgeons had studied in Austria with the Mayo brothers,” Jacobs said.

“They could do thyroid surgery that didn’t leave a glaring scar. These luminaries didn’t want to have scars.”

After learning about that history, Jacobs began his quest for innovations – and funding to support their development.

The first government grant came in the form of a heart study in cooperation with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the Dean Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease.

Through the Ornish program, Jacobs found a mission.

“It’s something that, I think, all of medicine needs to take a good look at,” Jacobs said. “The reason those people got so much better and improved so dramatically, physically, is that they were surrounded by professionals whose job it was to help them navigate through what they were experiencing.”

Patients in the program work with dietitians, doctors, nurses and psychologists to address risk factors for heart disease.

“It was almost like it created a medical womb,” Jacobs said.

“People made the transition from being victims to having some type of say and con-trol. This is the way health care could be and should be.”

Focus on patient control and preventive medicine brought dozens of new programs to Windber.

The Joyce Murtha Breast Care Center started with an idea by Windber board member and cancer survivor Jeanne McKelvey. The one-stop, patient-friendly diagnosis and treatment center is known for compassionate caregivers and a soothing environment.

The Planetree model aspires to create a home-like, healing environment for treating body, mind and spirit. Planters, colors and the smell of baking bread are hallmarks of Windber’s medical wards.

Innovations require growth, and the hospital community responded. In 2000, the $4 million Medical Arts Building opened as a model for preventive medicine. The top floor is a community fitness and therapy center with an indoor track and swimming pool – two things Jacobs was told couldn’t be done.

“I said, ‘There must be a way. Pack everything in and put the track around it,’ ” he recalled.

“ ‘The Love Boat’ had a pool. You’ve got to be able to put a pool on the second floor.”

They increased the cost, but the pool and track helped make HealthStyles a huge success, with more than 1,300 people paying monthly membership fees.

On the floor below HealthStyles is the integrative health wing, where doctors and trained therapists offer acupuncture, reflexology, stress management, music therapy and other nontraditional alternatives.

It wasn’t all easy, Jacobs concedes.

In fact, when Conemaugh Health System leaders first asked him, he almost turned down the job because he saw the tensions between Windber and Conemaugh’s flagship Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown.

Although Jacobs continues to lead Windber after last year’s disaffiliation from Conemaugh, he said it wasn’t easy being part of a system: His contract was with Windber, but there were “expectations” from Conemaugh.

“That would rank as some of the hardest times of my life,” Jacobs said. “It was very difficult to, in essence, serve two masters.”

The internal conflict may have been eased if he had been able to remain an outsider, but that wasn’t the case.

“About the second month I was here, my loyalties shifted here,” Jacobs said. “Then the passion to succeed grew.”

Windber succeeded where other larger institutions failed. A year ago, Windber officially disaffiliated from Conemaugh, stepping out as an independent community hospital.

“We all have to look back and say: There was Lee; there was Mercy; there was Memorial and there was Windber,” Jacobs said, listing the four hospitals that once competed in Greater Johnstown. “I don’t think any of us expected it would be Windber still standing with Memorial.”

He says he couldn’t have done it without the support of U.S. Rep. John Murtha, community and military leaders and other friends in high places.

“Most importantly, thanks to the almost 600 employees that we have here, because they stuck with it through some really tough times,” he said, recounting financial red ink that led to reduced benefits and salaries below similar nearby hospitals.

Their commitment gives Jacobs confidence that the Windber mission will continue with new leadership.

“This never would happen without that group,” Jacobs said.

“When people say, ‘If you leave, it’s going to be tough on Windber,’ the truth is, they have kept this going.”