POCAHONTAS — James Roetman is accustomed to tackling tough challenges.

The longtime chief executive officer of Pocahontas Community Hospital faced one of the most daunting challenges of his career when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the state last year.

“That initial, first month was really scary,” he said.

Faced with a situation in which no one knew exactly what the disease was and recommended medical protocols were changing on a weekly basis, the staff at the hospital had to learn new ways to care for patients.

Roetman is proud to say that the staff rose to the occasion.

“It really gave us the opportunity to demonstrate that yes, we can meet the needs of the people that we serve,” he said.

Steering a small rural hospital through a global pandemic was just one of Roetman’s professional accomplishments in the last year. In fact, people from across northern Iowa and the rest of the state will benefit from his work to bring better health care to more people.

He is the rural liaison for UnityPoint Health for a portion of northern Iowa. In that capacity, he works with leaders of Humboldt County Memorial Hospital, Stewart Memorial Community Hospital in Lake City, Loring Hospital in Sac City and Buena Vista Regional Medical Center in Storm Lake.

He said the group of hospital leaders works as partners rather than competitors to bring the best health care practices to their areas.

“That’s been a new role that’s challenged me,” he said of the rural liaison position.

He was also part of a lobbying effort by the Iowa Hospital Association which, after three years of work, finally resulted in emergency medical services being declared an essential function.

Having trained paramedics and emergency medical technicians ready to go at a moment’s notice would seem like an essential function to most Iowans, but it wasn’t defined as such under Iowa law. Roetman and other Hospital Association representatives worked with lawmakers to get that changed. The change was approved in the 2021 legislative session.

The practical effect of the legislation, Roetman said, is that it will now be easier for county boards of supervisors to levy taxes to support emergency medical services, spreading the costs of those services across the entire county.

Roetman’s efforts have not been limited to medical matters. He serves on a visioning committee which is looking toward the future of Pocahontas County. It focuses on workforce, recreation and housing.

“We’re working hard to recruit workforce,” he said. “There’s no use to recruiting business unless you can recruit workforce.”

Affordable housing in Pocahontas County has been identified as a real need, he said. Committee members have realized that local communities must be proactive in addressing the issues of workforce, recreation and housing instead of expecting help from elsewhere.

“What we’ve learned is that we can’t wait for a grant,” Roetman said.

To unwind from work and community efforts, Roetman and his family can retreat to a 120-acre wetlands that they own.

One of the big attractions there is a pair of trumpeter swans that has decided to call the place home. “They just like the habitat that we have there,” he said.

Roetman graduated from Iowa Central Community College in 1992 as part of the school’s first class of X-ray technicians. He has been with Pocahontas Community Hospital for 30 years.