After 13 years at the helm of Kitsap’s largest private employer, Harrison Hospital CEO David Gitch plans to hang up his hat at the end of this year. He says there is nothing magical about retiring at the age of 65, which he’ll celebrate this Christmas Day. After all, retiring at 65 is sort of the old American tradition. But as he plans to leave his 40-year-career in hospital administration, Gitch says the timing is not so much about age as it is about writing new chapters, in his own life as well as the hospital’s.

It all goes back to a personal mission. Gitch, who started his career at age 25, had been working with teaching hospitals for 25 years when a casual conversation with a retiring CEO had soon led to a new job offer: Come to Harrison from Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. Shifting gears to a community hospital from a teaching one meant returning to the environment where he once started his career. Moving to Kitsap meant being closer to family roots — his wife’s ancestors had longtime connections and family property in Poulsbo.

“I am driven by a mission. I have to have a mission that drives me,” he says. “In the teaching hospital, the mission was very clear. Here, our mission says we have to improve the quality of life for our patients—what do we have to do for accomplishing that?”

And so Mission Harrison began, at a time when population was growing and the hospital had to make decisions on how to grow along with it. Gitch’s team set priorities through a strategic plan that started from expanding and modernizing operating rooms to introducing a presence in South Kitsap through a Port Orchard campus.

In the following decade, Harrison began to bloom like a flower awoken from slumber in early spring. A Radiation Oncology Center, a Silverdale campus, a cardiac surgery unit — first one in the three-county region — and a new Bremerton emergency room were not only responding to higher population numbers but also to the changing needs of medical care. But for Gitch, the changes that went inside were the bigger mission. “Creating an environment in which a community has pride and confidence that they have access to quality health care and at the same time have quality personnel to deliver that care.”

Hearing feedback about people’s great personal experiences at Harrison was an inspiration for Gitch, adding fuel under the fire. Bad feedback was almost taken personally. As was the fight for health care — a fight that was intense 20 years ago and remains so today. In his 40-year career, one thing Gitch never saw change: the need for health care reform. That fight is only intensified now with the explosion of technology, the growing number of uninsured, the increasing complexity of health care delivery’s business side and the aging client base.

Gitch started his career almost the same time as Medicare was introduced, opening up access to services for seniors. But the battle to control costs has only grown, and, he says, “We have only muddled along.” Technology has been a boon: People spend half the time in the hospital than a few decades ago. On the other side of the equation, everyone expects only the best technology and treatment — but no one is volunteering to cover the costs.

So for Gitch, retirement is in some way only a redefined mission. While he plans to do some traveling and other ordinary things 65-year-old retirees do, like reading collections of accumulated books, he is not leaving the playing field. In fact, as a recent board member of the Washington Health Foundation, and part of several other organizations, Gitch will now have the opportunity to focus on policy issues.

From his simple office that overlooks the new entrance to the emergency room, Gitch nearly apologizes for the occasional loud humming that comes from the outside. As the workers tidy up the last of the remodeling on the old ER, that humming ought to be sweet symphony as the curtain falls on his nearly finished mission. But this modest giant of a man, described by colleagues and others as kind and “one heck of a nice guy,” makes sure to mention the two disappointments during his journey to transform the institution of Harrison and the institution of health care.

“When you look at the state of our so-called health care system, we’re still talking about the need to do it differently. We were talking about it 10 years ago, and in the ‘80s. Nothing has changed. It’s a disappointment,” he says. The other disappointment was more local: The vote by Bremerton residents not to fluoride the water.

His conceivably simple explanation of how he moved beyond disappointments while keeping his eyes fixed on the job rings too true and too inspiring to leave out: “If you believe in your cause and your mission, if you have persistence to stay on it, eventually you will get there. It may not be at your terms or timeline but if you stick with it, you’ll arrive at your destination.”

And so Gitch arrived at his own. As he feels “excited with anticipation” of his retirement and ready for the new chapter of his life (which will keep him fully busy, he realizes, “just a different kind of pace”), he says so is Harrison Hospital. It’s a new day for the organization, he says, and a new set of eyes, new thinking, and new leadership needs to lift it up into the new vision.

The time to make a transition is now, Gitch says. As is the time for a new way to look at health care. More patient accountability, better preventative medicine and education, more partnerships between organizations, and improved access to affordable care — Gitch says there is much more work to be done.