Long before Doug Ferguson became President and CEO of Joerns Healthcare, he understood what one of the company’s products could mean to families.
Seventeen years ago, Doug arrived for an interview at Joerns and came face-to-face with a piece of equipment he already knew well. “As a four-year-old growing up in rural South Carolina, I had two cousins who had been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. I watched my aunt face the challenge of caring for two boys who were growing quickly and becoming increasingly immobile.” Years later, walking into his interview with Joerns, he recognized that equipment immediately. “I realized the ‘jungle gym’ I had played on as a child was actually a Hoyer® lift. I understood what it could do for families caring for loved ones with chronic illness.”
During the interview process, Doug spent time with then CEO Mark Ludwig. Their discussion wasn’t about market share, products, or financial performance. It centered on the people Joerns serves. “All he talked about was how Joerns specifically exists to help chronically ill patients and their families. That resonated with me. We’re a purpose-led company working to ensure people with complex and chronic care needs receive the highest quality and dignity of care possible.”
By the time Doug became President and CEO in 2025, he was already deeply involved in defining the company’s direction. “As Chief Strategy Officer, one of my responsibilities was shaping the vision for Joerns. When I transitioned to CEO, I went from shaping that vision to owning it.” That transition also meant confronting a healthcare environment that looked very different from the one he entered 17 years earlier. Long-term care providers were caring for an increasingly larger patient population while facing workforce shortages, reimbursement pressures, and rising expectations from patients and families. Those realities now shape how Doug thinks about both strategy and innovation.
Mission drives strategy
The conversations Doug values most rarely start with technology. They start with the realities providers face, not with technology itself. “There is a difference between invention and innovation. An invention may be promising, but it does not become an innovation until it’s broadly adopted and scaled. We must make sure the clinical advantage is right, the economics work, and the change management is practical for caregivers and operators. Translating an idea into something providers can actually adopt is where Joerns excels.”
Doug has little interest in developing solutions from inside an executive conference room. Understanding what providers need starts with listening. “We rely on our customer advisory panel and direct provider feedback to continually recalibrate our compass. We ask, “What significant challenges are you facing? Which ones can Joerns meaningfully help you solve? And which solutions can you realistically adopt – clinically, economically, and operationally?” Those discussions consistently return to several persistent needs: preserving mobility, reducing falls and pressure injuries, and protecting caregivers.
“We believe that mobility is one of the most powerful forms of medicine.” That belief shapes how Doug views care delivery. Helping people move safely can address several risks at once – falls, pressure injuries, loss of independence, and caregiver strain. Joerns’ bed systems, therapeutic support surfaces, patient lifts, and repositioning solutions are all designed to support movement, reduce risk, and make care safer for both the person receiving it and the caregiver providing it.
Listening first
The conversations Doug has with providers often lead to the same question: how can caregivers identify risk earlier when fewer people are available to respond? One insight helped guide Joerns’ connected-care development: if a person spends a significant portion of the day in bed, the bed can play a larger role in identifying changes that may signal emerging risk. “We have built around the idea that the bed sits at the center of care. It can become a listening post. The conditions that lead to a fall often begin well before the fall itself, as a person’s mobility or condition deteriorates. The opportunity is to recognize those changes early enough to intervene.” That concept became a foundation for Joerns’ connected-care initiatives and smart-bed strategy. The objective is not to generate more information for caregivers to process. It is to turn meaningful signals into timely, practical action.
Identifying risk is only part of the equation. The next challenge is knowing what to do with the information. Like many healthcare executives, Doug sees opportunity. Unlike many, he talks less about technology and more about its practical application. “You don’t need a report. You don’t even really need an analysis. You need technology, including big data analysis, that can do the work, see the data, find the trend, and point you to an intervention, with the right checks and balances so it’s not hallucinating as it points you there.” Technology succeeds when it helps caregivers focus on patients, not systems.
Leading the vision
While connected care continues to evolve, Doug believes one of healthcare’s most consequential shifts is when people receive care. More individuals are choosing assisted living and remaining there longer, while others are receiving increasingly complex care at home. Providers are therefore rethinking what care environments should look like, how they should function, and how technology can support them.
Doug believes healthcare equipment must evolve alongside those expectations. “If a person can be cared for appropriately in assisted living, we want to enable that. You don’t need to be reminded every day that your care needs are advancing. The equipment should look, feel, and operate more like what you would choose for your home because it is your home.”
At the same time, demand for care is growing faster than the caregiver workforce. Doug has focused Joerns on solutions that are intuitive to use, reduce training burden, and support safer working environments. “Every caregiver should expect to go home as healthy as when they arrived. I want our solutions to help make that possible.”
His leadership philosophy reflects the same balance of support, humility, and accountability. “I try to help the team at Joerns understand every day that we need to be coachable by our customers. We must understand the problem they are trying to solve and be honest about whether we can help. The best thing we can do is say so when we cannot. Then, when we say we can help, we must deliver.”
Looking ahead, Doug expects care to continue shifting across skilled nursing, assisted living, and home-based settings. Connected technologies will be part of that evolution, yet when asked what he would change about the country’s healthcare system, his answer focuses on something much earlier in the care journey. “If we shifted the focus from treatment after diagnosis toward root causes, earlier intervention, and prevention, our investments would produce a greater return – both in individual outcomes and in long-term healthcare utilization.”
That perspective connects the future Doug sees with the reason he joined Joerns: helping people before challenges become crises, enabling caregivers to work more safely, and preserving dignity wherever care is delivered.
