Terry Varner: From Runaway To Here To Stay

Terry Varner: From Runaway To Here To Stay

The Outsider
By Justin Geurin

For many of us, we had a grand plan of how our lives would turn out after high school. Now, how many of us ended up on completely different paths? If you are one of those people, then Terry Varner can relate. 

After all Varner, the Administrator at Yalobusha Health Services was going to be a football coach once he finished his own playing career. In fact, if you sat down with Varner as a teenager and told him he would be running a hospital in Water Valley one day, he would probably laugh at you. Yet, as often happens, the dreams we have as teenagers sometimes turn out better than we could have imagined. 

The first thing you have to understand about Varner and his relationship to Water Valley, is he absolutely did not want to move here before his 10th grade year. In fact, he so badly did not want to leave his hometown of Oxford, that he stole his stepfather’s truck and wallet and was planning to run away. 

“I had counted up the cost of sandwiches to make it until I turned 18,” he said. While he did think better of his plan and come home, the budgeting would ironically play a significant role in his life.

During his three years at Water Valley High, Varner played football and really did not care much for his schoolwork, with one exception: an accounting class. As he explains, “I was making Cs and Ds in everything else, but 100s in accounting.” 

His natural skills for crunching numbers followed him to Northwest, where he decided to give up his football career, before finishing his college degree at Delta State University, majoring in accounting. He then remained in Cleveland as a graduate assistant while completing a Master’s Degree before taking a job at an accounting firm in Jackson. 

Later, Varner was growing tired of the “factory-like” work in an accounting firm. Back in Water Valley, Brownie Crawford was the Chief Financial Officer at Yalobusha General and planning to retire, so he contacted Varner about replacing him. At the time, Varner and his wife Tracey had recently welcomed their son, Ty, and decided to move back to Water Valley. After just one year acting as the CFO, Varner got another opportunity, as the hospital’s administrator was leaving after a brief tenure. 

Crawford once again reached out to Varner and asked him to consider taking the job. “I also had doctors at the hospital approach me and say, ‘just try it and we’ll see what happens,’” Varner stated. 

The hospital was having a difficult time keeping an administrator for an extended period, with a string of administrators averaging just two years on the job prior to Varner. Since taking over as the administrator 14 years ago, Varner’s primary contribution has been providing stability and growing the hospital into a thriving organization. In that time, the hospital has undergone more than $25 million in renovations, and the nursing home earned a coveted 5-Star rating (just 10% of the nation’s nursing homes  have earned a 5-Star rating. )

When asked about what he enjoys most about running a hospital, Varner quickly mentioned interacting with staff and patients, which he says is similar in nature to the coaching he once thought he would be doing. He feels the organization truly is a family and he enjoys how much pride each staff member takes in working at Yalobusha General. In fact, he had tears in his eyes when describing how much love and support he received from everyone at the hospital during his own recent health issues. 

As with any job, especially a leadership role, there are always difficult aspects as well. Varner stated, “I want to ensure we develop a quality staff,” which sometimes means having to make tough decisions, which can be particularly awkward in a small town. The hardest part is “balancing the expectations of what we can and cannot do,” he says. With healthcare policies that are ever changing, it is a struggle to make long-term plans. 

At the same time, the hospital continues to grow and thrive. Varner continues to work to find new ways to service the community, with services ranging from cardiac stress testing, a sleep lab, and a chiropractor, in addition to the highly rated nursing home facilities. There is also work being done to bring tele-medicine conferencing to Yalobusha General through a partnership with The University of Mississippi Medical Center. 

The biggest contribution of the hospital though, in Varner’s opinion, is providing a host of quality, stable jobs for people of the community. Yalobusha General will pay for the certification training for students hoping to be a nurse, nurse practitioner, or even a doctor in exchange for returning to work at the hospital. In addition, there is even a Nurse Aid certification program on campus. 

Varner loves being a part of the Water Valley community. In his mind, the best thing about this town is the people, as he says, “You don’t build the same relationships in large communities like you can here.” As the town continues to grow, he hopes people will have increasing levels of civic pride and commit to things like keeping the city clean and supporting the local schools. It seems like, even though he once tried his best to run away from Water Valley, it is now a place he is proud to call home and cannot imagine leaving.