The men and women who serve in the military are heroes to Dr. James “Jay” L. Robinson III and his job is to serve them.

Robinson – fresh out of Georgia and having never set foot in Memphis before – is the new director of the Memphis Veterans Administration Hospital.

Dr. James “Jay” L. Robinson III, the new director of the Memphis VA Hospital, has an eye for the small things that he says lead to better customer satisfaction. (Photo by Warren Roseborough)

“I practice the philosophy of servant leadership,” Robinson told the Tri-State Defender in his first Memphis media interview. “I really want to serve veterans. I want them to feel honored when they come here. I have to treat them like they are heroes.”

Robinson moves into the local VA hospital’s top leadership spot amid the annual Veteran’s Day observance, as the president weighs the country’s future in Afghanistan, and the country seeks to balance itself in the unsettling wake of the Ft. Hood massacre last week.

Providing psychological services is one of the hospital’s most important jobs, said Robinson.

“The VA is definitely a leader in terms of providing mental health care,” he said. “We provide specialized healthcare for homeless veterans, substance abuse programs, post-traumatic stress disorders, intervention and general mental health. We have an in-patient ward. It’s a whole host of resources.”

In addition, the hospital has special outreach services available for military personnel returning from Afghanistan, Iraq and other battle zones.

“We have a team and staff. That’s their job – to do outreach and case manage that population. We try to be assertive in identifying and linking them up with services quickly,” said Robinson.

“One of the things the VA has taken pretty warranted criticism in the past for was outreach to previous era veterans. We’ve learned from that and I think our approach is now very proactive in trying to find that population and make sure there is no gap between needing service and accessing that care.”

Robinson applied for the Memphis VA director’s job after the previous director moved to another position. And as he has at previous career stops, he draws upon intestinal fortitude, enthusiasm and positive outlook – qualities his mother instilled in him.

“My biggest hero is my mother,” said Robinson, noting that she died in March. “She had to deal with raising me. My father was disabled pretty much from the time I was about four. So a lot of the heavy lifting was on her. And during that period she got her master’s. She is a well respected teacher in Georgia.”

Robinson was born in Portsmouth, Va., and moved to the Atlanta area when his father took a job there at the VA hospital after his discharge. A clinical psychologist, he went to college at the University of Georgia and graduate school in Virginia at William and Mary. After an internship in Pittsburgh, he got a job offer in the Veterans Administration working with homeless veterans.

Robinson said he inherits a hospital that is fairly well run, with the previous director having done “some pretty good stuff.”

“I think there are some opportunities with patient satisfaction that we need to work on. Some things I want to expand. Some of the home health options, treating veterans in their homes,” said Robinson.

The Memphis VA, which has 10 clinics in the tri-state area, is growing robustly, he said, with about an 8.3 percent growth rate in patient load in the last year. The hospital served about 50,000 veterans.

 “Sometimes you hear sort of the bad side, the underbelly of the VA. We do have issues, but the quality of the care really has become second to none,” said Robinson.

Robinson said this year the VA adopted the same metrics for quality used by the private sector in order to address lingering perceptions about quality and patient care.

 “Our facility has some improvement it can do. And we are going to work hard to improve that perception. And it’s small things like making sure that before a veteran leaves that he or she is satisfied … really going the extra mile to assess satisfaction at every stop,” said Robinson.

His early agenda has included meeting with area service providers. He has found good, solid working relationships in place. And he’s encouraging his staff to keep up something he said they already are doing well – volunteering in the community.

The Memphis VA is reaching about 40 percent of the veterans in its area, said Robinson. And while that figure is good, Robinson said the hospital can do better.

The plusses of the Memphis VA include “really good staffing,” said Robinson, with people working on cutting- edge developments in areas such as hypertension. And he plans to increase the emphasis on research.

Unlike some private and public hospitals, the VA has not had to sharply reduce services due to the economy, although “the economic downturn has probably hit our patient population a lot more substantially than the more higher income people,” said Robinson. “We are seeing some fallout from that.”

Robinson is optimistic about the prospects for the Memphis VA’s future. He brings a unique skill set to the job. He practiced clinical psychology until 2001 and uses aspects of it on a daily basis even now. Plus, he comes from a family of “people in service, kind-of-helping industries.” In addition to his mother the teacher, his uncle was a social worker and his grandfather was a principal.

Robinson never has been in the service. He was in the Air Force ROTC and wanted to fly airplanes, but he had a stigmatism and at that time there wasn’t all “the fancy stuff to correct your vision,” he said.

Memphis is the farthest west that he ever has lived. He is comfortable with Memphis being the new home to his family, which includes his wife and three children.

He is committed to doing all that is necessary to demystify the VA and remove any reluctance to use the facility. “The strategy really is one veteran at a time,” he said.

“That may sound a little cliché, but once you start satisfying people and even going beyond satisfaction to delighting them, they spread that.”