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Maria Zampini: UMC’s New CEO Powerhouse
Story and Photography by Annabella Mireles
University Medical Center is undergoing significant changes, supported by the 2024 $396.6 million voter-approved bond, including additions such as a new burn center, cancer center and urgent care clinics.
The projects are intended to expand the level of care offered in the borderland as Maria Zampini steps into the role of chief executive officer and leads UMC through its next phase of growth.
Zampini, who has been with UMC for 30 years and has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at El Paso, was formerly the hospital’s chief operating officer. In that role, she oversaw several expansions and completed more than $500 million in expansion projects.
“Healthcare is the crux of any community,” Zampini said. “Even when I was in school getting my degree, I always thought It’d be interesting to work in a hospital because there are so many different positions with opportunities to grow.”
Zampini has spent much of her career at the hospital, working her way up while developing her own leadership style.
“You learn something new every day,” she said. “We have over 4,000 employees. I think the most important thing I’ve learned is to listen to people. Every area is so different from the other, and you have professionals who work in each of those areas, so my job is to listen and support what they’re doing.”
Although Zampini has only been in the role for two weeks, her background as chief operating officer and the various positions she has held throughout her career at UMC have helped her feel confident stepping into the role.
“I used to work in patient relations, and I’d go out and talk to the patients myself,” she said. “If they had an issue, I was the one they came to talk to. Most people don’t see that side of care. They don’t see that struggle, and so it’s good to see how executive decisions we make translate into how it’s going to impact patients. Every decision that I make now, I think about how that policy change is going to impact how our patients see us.”
She is also the first woman to take on the role at UMC, marking a milestone for her and the hospital district.
“It’s exciting to be the first woman,” she said. “If there are women or young girls out there that think they can’t do something, I hope they see they can. It’s really about making sure whatever position or craft you have, you learn it and learn it well.”
“When I started 30 years ago, it was just the hospital,” Zampini said about how UMC has changed since she first started. “Over the last 10 or 15 years, we’ve grown so much more. Now we have the El Paso Children’s Hospital, El Paso Health, a 501(a), and a foundation. So, we’ve gone from a hospital to a hospital district. Every day it’s evolving a little bit more.”
Zampini described the expansion in two parts: internal renovations to the main hospital, including operating rooms, catheterization labs, endoscopy, the burn center and imaging capabilities; and off-campus projects, including emergency rooms, ambulatory surgery units, a centrally located geriatric clinic and a clinic in Horizon.
“My vision is what the hospital district’s vision is, and it’s continuing to provide access points to the community,” she said. “We’re going to continue putting clinics and ER’s and making sure that we can take all the patients that need care. One of the things that we’ve worked very hard on is providing services that didn’t exist. We don’t want our community members to leave El Paso to seek care.”
In addition to being a longtime UMC employee, Zampini also takes pride in being a lifelong El Pasoan. She said her connection to the borderland fuels her passion to ensure the community has what it needs.
“What’s kept me here so long is that, thankfully, I’ve been in a position that has allowed me to see how our work translates into a better quality of life for the El Paso community. When you’re kind of responsible for putting together the architecture, buying the land, putting that architecture together while seeing the buildings go up, it translates into how many more patients are seen. Being a lifelong El Pasoan, knowing there’s a gap in healthcare, and having my family go to all our services, makes me have even more passion for what we do.”
From being on construction sites in her pink hard hat to working closely with her team, Zampini takes a hands-on approach to ensuring quality firsthand. Despite the promotion, she said the role does not change the way she views her team.
“Somebody showed me a picture of when I was director of guest services,” Zampini said. “There were like four or five of us in the picture. Every once in a while, we’ll still go and have lunch! It really helps because people are very free to talk to me since they’ve known me for so many years. I’ve known some physicians for 25 or 30 years. I’ve grown up with them. There are so many things that happen that create those bonds within the staff and the physicians, so that’ll be very helpful because they’re not going to hesitate to come up and talk to me.”
Zampini said UMC’s expansion is focused on increasing access to care and extending the hospital district’s reach. Her experience across several roles at UMC has shaped how she approaches the CEO position and the responsibility of helping guide the hospital district’s growth.
“I’m not going to underestimate or overestimate the effort it takes,” she said. “As soon as we opened the clinics, we had what we thought was going to be five years of patients in the first year because there is such a lack of health care in El Paso. So, we will continue our mission in providing services that patients of the El Paso community need. We want patients to come out knowing that we care about them as a person. We care about their families, and we’re trying our best to make sure that they not only get what they need, but what they deserve.”
