ST. GEORGE — The leader of the nurses at St. George Regional Hospital will now be the leader of the entire hospital.
Natalie Ashby, who has served as the nurse administrator at the hospital since February 2020 and through the COVID pandemic, was named Monday as the new president of the facility by parent company Intermountain Health.
The president title replaces the previous administrator title but has the same function, Intermountain said. Ashby will also serve as the president of the Southern Utah market for Intermountain, which also includes Cedar City Hospital and Garfield Memorial Hospital in Panguitch.
She replaces Mitch Cloward, who was named president overseeing all of the Southern Utah and Southern Nevada region for Intermountain.
Ashby’s path from nursing to leadership at the hospital is similar to that of Terri Kane, who led a period of expansion at the facility before passing the administrator role to Cloward in 2017.
When Kane retired, she left a note in Ashby’s desk that she still has: “Take Mitch’s job when he’s done.”
“I had just barely started the nurse administrator role, and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about, Terri?’” Ashby told St. George News. “I’m going to continue the great work that had been done ahead of me. We’ve had some great leaders before in Mitch and Terri and they have both been my direct supervisors at points in my career. So I’ve been closely mentored by both of them.”
Cloward provided praise for Ashby.
“St. George Regional and Southwest Utah are in good hands with Natalie at the helm,” Cloward said in a statement. “Her positive energy, extremely smart and studied approach, and can-do leadership has helped lead our region into providing the highest quality of care and most robust offering of services in the history of health care in Southern Utah.”
Ashby, 51, grew up in Oklahoma, then attended BYU-Idaho before earning a nursing degree from Utah Valley University. She started her nursing career in 1995 at Intermountain LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. She arrived at what was then Dixie Regional Medical Center in June 2005 to direct neurosciences there before going on to lead the nurses.
Cyndi Gilbert, who heads the Board of Trustees of the hospital, said Ashby’s experience in the trenches as a nurse makes her a better leader for the hospital.
“The nice part about Natalie is she’s been promoted from within but she comes from the bedside,” Gilbert told St. George News.
During the pandemic, Ashby helped lead vaccine distribution efforts at the hospital. Gilbert said it was a question on that work during COVID-19 that was a big factor in swaying the board among seven internal candidates.
“We had to do it really rapid fire,” Ashby recalled as far as what she said during the interview for the president position. “It was rapid, rapid, rapid and I had some incredible team members that worked with me and we were able to get it up and to change in the moment because as we started, there were things that we could do this better, we could do that faster. We just did rapid-fire changes to make it even more efficient for, um, our caregivers to come and get their vaccines.
Intermountain also says she has played a role in obtaining national certifications in stroke, spine and neurosciences at the hospital.
Outside the hospital, Ashby serves on the advisory boards for Utah Tech University Health Sciences, the Southern Utah University Department of Nursing and the DOVE Center for domestic violence and sexual assault.
She is also the mother of a daughter and two sons, as well as twin grandsons. Her daughter works with her husband, while Ashby’s sons are looking to follow her into the medical field.
“One is in medical school now, and the other one is at BYU wanting to get into medical school,” Ashby said. “I told them all, I need you to come back here to St. George.”
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