Todd Sandberg

Powell Valley Healthcare’s new CEO has worked in hospitals all over the country in a long career, from Texas to Minnesota, Wisconsin to Kansas. 

But what drew Todd Sandberg to Powell was the location — near his favorite camping spot in the Bighorns and a number of fantastic trout rivers — and above all the chance to finish his career at a community hospital. 

“I think that what most residents want from their community hospital is to be able to get their care done, close to home, and with high quality and with good outcomes,” he said. “So I think that’s the main thing where we can provide those services.”

Sandberg began in his role as the new CEO in mid-December after being chosen in November to replace interim CEO Sean McCallister, who had filled in since the spring when former CEO Joy Coulston had abruptly resigned soon after the then chief financial officer, a position that has yet to be replaced. 

Sandberg said filling that role is high on his list of goals to accomplish, but one of his primary goals early on is simply to observe the working of the hospital and learn. 

“Really this first 90 days is listening and learning, you know …,” Sandberg said. “The last six months, with Sean coming in, a lot of different things were started. So the balls are rolling. So I don’t want to lose momentum on those.”

Sandberg was most recently at ClearSky Health Rehabilitation Hospital, where he served as CEO of facilities in Wisconsin, Missouri and Kansas. He has more than 20 years of health care leadership experience to the role, including 15 years of CEO leadership at Critical Access Hospitals and Acute Rehabilitation Hospitals. This includes three years as CEO of Elkhorn Valley Rehabilitation Hospital in Casper.

He said while his previous stint in Wyoming was brief, the experience stuck with him and he wanted to look west again when he could. 

“The last 20 years or so has been in leadership, and mostly in rural communities this size, or maybe even a little bit smaller … but I’m excited to be back out west after being at Casper for three years,” he said. “Everybody’s making me feel welcome.”

Sandberg grew up mostly in Brainerd, Minnesota, two hours north of Minneapolis in an area with a lot of lakes and resorts, he said. 

He then went to college first in Duluth, Minnesota, and then to Pennsylvania for his masters degree to, working initially as a clinical exercise physiologist, and then in cardiac rehab.

“I started out taking care of patients,” Sandberg said. “And one of the fun parts was, some of the bigger hospitals I was at, we did heart transplant patients, so that was pretty rewarding.”

Then he started thinking about management and his goal became to be the CEO of a hospital. So he went back to school to get his MBA. 

He started working at small critical care hospitals, and was CEO at a number, mostly in the Minnesota area to be near his aging parents. 

He credited his mother and grandmother with his easy going nature and servant focus. 

“I’m just kind of servant hearted, I guess you would say, and I do my best to try to seek to understand,” he said. 

He said he also focuses on collaboration within a hospital, wanting to hear from staff all of the ideas, some of which may be enacted in the future to help the organization. Still, after a lengthy career leading hospitals he needed a break a few years ago. 

“After Covid, I was kind of burned out,” he said. “I took a little break. My wife and I actually bought a cruise planners franchise.”

That business has held on to this day as a fun side gig for Sandberg, but he soon after returned to leading a couple more hospitals back in the midwest before finding the opening in Wyoming. Now, he’s happy to devote himself now to overseeing Powell’s hospital. 

“That’s what I was looking for in my last move, my goal was to find a place, one where I felt like I could make a difference and have a supportive board, have a solid leadership team, which we do here, and then also being a part of the country that I love,” he said. “We really enjoy the West. And I’m excited to be out here, be able to start doing a little more trout fishing, again, floating rivers and wading, and then also just camping up in the mountains.”