The Big Picture
For more than three decades, Roger Marett has helped transform access to healthcare in northeastern Utah. As vice president of physician services at Uintah Basin Healthcare, Marett has recruited more than 160 providers to a rural region where the nearest tertiary care centers are roughly two and a half hours away.
That work has helped Uintah Basin Healthcare grow from a small county hospital with about a dozen providers into a comprehensive rural health system serving approximately 60,000 people across the Uintah Basin—including members of the Ute Tribe. In recognition of his extraordinary service and lasting impact, Marett is receiving the Utah Hospital Association’s Distinguished Service in Healthcare Award.
What’s Happening
Marett joined Uintah Basin Healthcare in 1991 and quickly recognized that the hospital could serve a much larger regional population by expanding its medical staff and specialty care. With support from hospital leadership, physicians, staff and the community, he began building a recruitment program that brought new providers and services to Roosevelt, Vernal and surrounding communities.
His approach has always been deeply personal. Marett holds a commercial driver’s license and has personally helped move dozens of providers and their families to the Basin—loading their belongings, driving moving trucks across the country and helping them settle into the community. What began as a way to save the hospital money became one of its most effective recruitment tools.
That commitment extends beyond moving day. Marett builds lasting relationships with providers and their families, introduces them to the region and works to ensure they have the facilities, staff and support they need to succeed. Colleagues describe him as a hands-on problem solver, a trusted mentor and a leader who gives people room to grow.
Why It Matters
Recruiting providers to a remote rural community is difficult, but the consequences reach far beyond staffing. Every new physician expands local access to care, supports additional jobs and reduces the distance patients must travel for essential services.
Because of the medical workforce Marett helped build, Uintah Basin residents can receive chemotherapy, dialysis, surgery, specialty consultations, behavioral healthcare and other services closer to home. Older adults can remain near their families. Working families can avoid hours of travel, lost wages and added expenses. Patients facing urgent or complex conditions can receive care without dangerous delays caused by distance.
Marett’s work also helped Uintah Basin Healthcare expand from a primary-care foundation into a health system offering surgical and nonsurgical specialties, cancer and infusion care, dialysis, urgent care, regional clinics and ambulance services. As Chief of Medical Staff Dr. John Wells explained, Marett saw that specialists could be brought to the Basin rather than requiring patients to travel to Salt Lake City—and he continued building on that vision.
The impact is economic as well as clinical. Board member Irene Hansen noted that each physician creates additional support jobs in the community. In a rural area, that growth means more career opportunities for local residents and more reasons for young people to build their futures close to home.
The Bottom Line
Marett’s legacy is measured not only in providers recruited or services added, but in lives changed. His vision helped make high-quality specialty care available in a region where geography once placed it out of reach. His personal approach created a culture built as much on friendship and trust as on business.
Marett is quick to share the credit with his family, hospital leaders, physicians, support staff and the broader community. “I’m truly grateful,” he said. “I feel honored to receive such an award, but couldn’t have gotten it without the help and support of all of the people that I worked with here on a daily basis.”
The Distinguished Service in Healthcare Award recognizes that collective effort—and the leader whose persistence, humility and willingness to do the work helped make it possible.