Martin L. Doordan:
Longtime AAMC President Committed to Meeting Community's Healthcare Needs

By Margot Mohsberg

Martin L. Doordan, president of Anne Arundel Medical Center, has a tight work schedule that leaves little to chance. Nevertheless, he frequently makes time to walk the halls of the hospital, chatting with employees, patients and their families as if they have known each other for years. And, after working at the hospital more than 34 years, many of them he has.

Chip, as he likes to be called by everyone, says he goes on these walks because he cares about the patients and employees. But truth be known, he has another reason for walking as well.

“It grounds me,” he says. “It makes me realize exactly what business we are in. When you walk by a patient room, each room is a story. The responsibility we have is enormous.”

Chip says the only way for him to know truly what is going on at AAMC is to see it for himself.

“I don’t think anyone can sit behind a desk and know what’s going on,” he says. “I encourage everyone here to get up and walk around the hospital. No one is more upset than I am when I walk into the Emergency Department and see anyone waiting. But I feel better when I know we have a highly competent staff and many systems in place to help these people. If we are still able to offer care to them, then I am satisfied we are doing our job as best we can.”

Chip is a rare find in the health care field – literally. Unlike most hospital presidents who move from organization to organization, Chip has been with AAMC since day one back in 1972 and recently agreed to stay another “five years.”

“I’ve looked around from time to time but something always brought me back,” he says. “This is a great place to live and I was very fortunate to work for a hospital where there was always room for growth.”

Chip grew up in Bridgeville, DE, an agricultural town of 1,800 people. People from Annapolis know it as one of the speed trap towns on the way to the beach, but he remembers it differently.

“It was a wonderful place to grow up and I cherish it immensely,” he says. “There was one pool hall, one bar, one grocery store, one furniture store, etc. I always said the movie ‘American Graffiti’ could have been filmed there on a smaller scale.”

His parents met when they were both students at the University of Delaware in Newark. His father, Martin L. Doordan, Sr., was the son of Irish immigrants and served as the vice president of an agricultural company. His mother, Margaret, was an elementary schoolteacher who had grown up in Bridgeville. They had two children, Chip and his younger sister Margaret.

Martin Sr. passed away when Chip was only four years old. Nevertheless, his father had a profound influence on him.

“My mother didn’t tell me much about him because I think she was still very hurt by his death, but I learned from relatives on both sides and from members of the community what kind of man he was,” Chip says. “He had such an impact on the community. I idolized my father, whom I never knew, and I always will.”

Knowing that Chip would need strong male influences in his life, his mother encouraged him in the Boy Scouts and he played several sports.

“I was blessed to be able to do these activities because they provided me with a great many father figures,” Chip says.

His mother also wanted her son to be well rounded, signing him up for clarinet lessons and a speech school, which exposed him to literature and public speaking.

“I fought it, but it was good for me,” he says. “My mother knew I needed to get out of Bridgeville and go to college and that this would help me. If I had my way, I would have just gone into the Navy.”

Chip attended the University of Delaware, studying agricultural business, just like his father.

“I wanted to follow in his footsteps,” he says.

Moving from a small town to a large university was quite a change for him.

“I was quite the cat’s meow in Bridgeville because I played sports,” he says. “But when I went to UD, I became an awfully small fish. It’s the typical story.”

He went on to get a masters degree in agriculture economics from the University of Maryland before getting a direct commission into the Army’s Medical Services Corps.

“The military is very important to me in so many ways,” says Chip, who now gives lectures to the military on healthcare management in the civilian world. “It gave me my career. From the first day I reported to duty, I knew that working in the health care field was what I wanted to do. The dynamics of doing something to help people... the rush of medicine... I love it.”

After returning from Vietnam, he completed a second masters from George Washington University in health care administration and began looking for a hospital to complete his residency. At the same time, AAMC lost an administrator who had started out as a resident.

“I put in a call, despite AAMC seeming so far away when I was growing up in southern Delaware,” he says. “Crossing over the Bay Bridge was like going to the other side of the moon.”

Lyman C. “Whit” Whittaker was president of the hospital and Carl A. “Chuck” Brunetto was second in line. They decided to hire Chip for a one-year residency with the hope that he would be a good fit for the long term. And he was. When Whit retired, Chuck took over and when Chuck retired, Chip took over as president of AAMC in 1988 and then, in 1994, became president of the parent organization, Anne Arundel Health System.

“It just worked out in a very positive way,” he says. “We’ve had only three CEOs in 50 years. That’s very unusual. Typically, CEOs in the healthcare industry have a yearly turnover rate of almost 20 percent.”

Chip attributes his success to his ability to bring in other successful people, be receptive to change, and stay up to date on current trends.

“We live in a wonderful area that allows us to attract the kind of medical staff, management staff, employees, volunteers and board members who allow you to do great things,” says Chip, who lives in Harwood with his wife, Tina, and has two grown sons, Martin and Sean, and a stepdaughter, JoAnna.

Martin is a former model pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles. JoAnna is pursuing a master’s degree in art therapy in Santa Fe, NM. And, similar to his father’s career path, Sean started a career in healthcare administration before discovering a passion for real estate development. He is now working fulltime for a major developer in the region and earning his second master’s degree in real estate development at Johns Hopkins University.

“I’ve always tried to encourage my kids to pursue their dreams and let them see where these dreams takes them,” Chip says.

Dick Davidson, president of The American Hospital Association and an Annapolis resident, has known Chip for 30 years and says he is the perfect role model for someone considering a career in health care.

“Chip has a great many qualities as a leader, but the one that impressed me the most is his selflessness,” Dick says. “He doesn’t worry about who gets credit for which achievement. He’d rather be behind the scenes inspiring others, coaching, encouraging and building teams and consensus to get something done to make health care better for patients and the community. It’s the kind of leadership that puts something rather than someone at the center of a goal. That’s very special. He has served our community so very well.”

Chip says he agreed to stay at AAMC another five years for several reasons, one of which is to help the hospital complete its next phase of growth – an expansion plan called Vision 2010. The hospital recently received approval to build a $210 million, nine-story tower featuring 50 additional beds, eight operating rooms and a much larger Emergency Department.

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