Catholic Health World -April 2024

“They want closure for themselves. And they want their baby to be remembered — that they did exist, they had a story, they had a purpose, they were part of the family.”

HEALING FROM LOSS

Ministry facilities support families grieving stillbirth or miscarriage

By JULIE MINDA

When Lisa Logan started working in neonatal nursing more than 40 years ago, there generally was little formal programming at most hospitals to help parents who experienced miscarriage or stillbirth. The death of a baby was by and large a taboo subject in society — and sometimes even in hospitals.

Now a neonatal clinical nurse educator and bereavement coordinator at Mercy Hospital Springfield in Missouri, Logan says times, thankfully, have changed. The medical field has evolved greatly in understanding infant loss and the devastating impact

Personalized mementos can help families cope with loss of a baby

By JULIE MINDA

When Beth Pahnke of Waunakee, Wisconsin, recently put her 1994 wedding dress into her garage sale, a customer mentioned that her dress could serve a higher purpose — she could donate it. An online search revealed she could give her dress to nearby SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital — Madison, where a hospital volunteer transforms donated wedding dresses into burial gowns for babies. “I hadn’t heard of this before, but it was a no-brainer to donate the dress,” Pahnke explains. “I experienced a stillbirth many years ago. You don’t forget it. I moved forward, but I understand what

Systems partner with nurse-led call center to improve patient experience

By JULIE MINDA

When a rare snowstorm hit large swaths of Texas in January, numerous CHRISTUS Health clinics had to cancel and reschedule appointments, answer patients’ questions and provide them with updates.

Nurses with a company called Conduit Health Partners, which CHRISTUS signed on with last year to handle such calls, were able to contact all affected patients to notify them of the cancellations, work with them to set up new appointments, and field questions and concerns. The nurses handled more than 3,000 calls in one day.

“We even found that since patients had access to these nurses by phone, patient

Closure of rural facilities is ‘wake-up call’ for nation, says HSHS head

By JULIE MINDA

Hospital Sisters Health System announced early this year that it would close its two Western Wisconsin hospitals. HSHS’s physician network partner, Prevea Health, is closing all of its locations in that region.

HSHS said multiple factors led to the closure of HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire and HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls. These factors included “prolonged operational and financial stress related to lingering impacts of the pandemic, inflation, workforce constraints, local market challenges and other industrywide trends,” according to a press release.

HSHS President and CEO Damond Boatwright spoke to Catholic Health World about the closures and the implications for

Providence to expand co-caring model that adds virtual nurses to the team

By DALE SINGER

Amid a satisfying career in nursing, Brandie Wilson wasn’t necessarily looking for another job. But she was too intrigued about the opportunity at Covenant Medical Center in her hometown of Lubbock, Texas, not to check it out.

She’s glad she did. The hospital’s co-caring model of virtual nursing showed her a whole new way to practice. Working from home, she can respond to a patient’s push of a button and join a streamlined, modern medical team.

“I did emergency room nursing for so long that in my mind, everything had to be stat and now and how many patients could I physically get to in one hour?” she explained. “It was just rush, rush, rush.

“When I got here, I had to learn to take a step back and realize that it was no longer that way. I could take the time to not talk. The patients didn’t need to hear me talk. They just needed to be listened to and be

Ministry facilities help families in a holistic way when those families are experiencing infant loss, including by providing an array of mementos. This sampling of items is from the Chesterfield, Missouri-based Mercy system; the St. Louis-based SSM Health system; and Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. Boatwright

Wilson

Nurse Deepa Khetia handles transfer center requests for Conduit Health Partners. She since has been promoted to account manager.

Environmental leadership

Two executives from CommonSpirit Health discuss their participation in the global COP28 conference and the system’s committed push toward sustainability.

Return to Ukraine

Bruce Compton, senior director of global health at CHA, shares his reflections as he travels with a contingent from Catholic relief groups on his second visit to Ukraine.

Chaos in Haiti

Catholic and other relief groups say the violence and political instability in Haiti are complicating their efforts to provide aid to a nation badly in need of support.

Providence’s ‘Sister Soil’ digs deeper into environmental sustainability

By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN

Sr. Sara Tarango, also known as “Sister Soil,” is all about working from the ground up. She joined Providence St. Joseph Health’s environmental stewardship department last year as environmental stewardship liaison for southern California.

Sr. Tarango is a Sister of St. Joseph of Orange, a congregation she joined nearly five years ago after a career in the wine and hotel industries.

She says her life changed after watching a documentary about soil health called Kiss the Ground, a collaboration from the nonprofit by the same name. The film is available on Netflix, and a follow-up film, Common Ground, was released in theaters last fall.

Catholic Health World spoke with Sr. Tarango, who lives in Santa Ana, California, about her career, her vocational path and how soil health affects the health of people. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. A longer version of this interview is posted at chausa.org/chw.

What does your job entail?

Every day is different. It is partnering with our 11 hospital ministries (in our region), and some of them have green teams that were already in existence. Unfortunately, the pandemic stopped a lot of green team momentum. All of our southern California ministries are either relaunching or rebooting their green teams (a group of caregivers who are committed to helping the organization be more environmentally sustainable). Working for Providence’s environmental stewardship team, I can see what’s happening at the system level from Alaska to Texas in terms of environmental stewardship. I can connect people from one ministry to the other. I can talk about projects that are happening and once we have the data, hopefully, we can roll this out systemwide if it’s effective.

Tell us more about your background and how that may have paved the way for your position now.

I majored in Spanish and Latin American studies with a minor in international relations. I got a job teaching, and I loved it. I just felt that this wasn’t where God was calling me to be for a career for the rest of my life. I went back to school in Santa Rosa, California, and started studying business. That’s how my resume made it to the desk of an HR manager at Kendall-Jackson (winery). I thought I would work in finance because I like numbers. But I realized quickly working in finance that the higher up you go, the more it’s just you and your computer. I needed people.

A very savvy HR manager called me one day and said, “Are you bilingual?” I said, “Yes,” and she said, “Would you help us out with our hiring for the harvest season?” I’m in my early 20s. I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” From that position, I realized my passion for human resources. What I loved about that job was I was serving people. I saw that as

culture and food, the “C” is chemicals, and the “T” is transportation. My favorite letter, sorry, I’m biased, is the agriculture and food. We have a third party that provides food at most of our hospitals. We are looking at food that is not full of chemicals or ultra-processed, that doesn’t come from the field. When we look at our foods, we are looking at foods with a lower carbon footprint. Where do they come from? Are they sustainably grown? Are they grown near or far? The chefs can actually make choices that will lower the carbon impact.

Thanks to SB 1383 (California’s law to help reduce waste and promote sustainability), all of our hospitals in California are composting, keeping the leftovers of the waste out of the landfill, where it can produce methane.

New Jersey-based Saint Peter’s in talks to integrate into Atlantic Health

Saint Peter’s Healthcare System of New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Atlantic Health System of Morristown, New Jersey, have signed a letter of intent to enter into a strategic partnership.

The two organizations say they hope to reach a definitive agreement for full integration of Saint Peter’s into Atlantic Health. The completion of the deal could take up to 18 months, according to a Saint Peter’s representative.

Sponsored by the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, the not-for-profit Saint Peter’s includes the 478-bed teaching hospital Saint Peter’s University Hospital as well as a children’s hospital, perinatal center, foundation and a network of primary and specialty care facilities. The not-for-profit Atlantic Health is a network of more than 550 facilities, including seven hospitals in northern New Jersey.

Under the proposed transaction, Saint Peter’s would become part of Atlantic Health. Saint Peter’s would remain a Catholic facility, and it would continue to abide by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services

According to a joint press release, Atlantic Health would make “significant investments in Saint Peter’s and the service area.” The Saint Peter’s representative, Senior Director of Marketing Michelle Lazzarotti, said the organizations cannot quantify the investment amount at this time.

a way to serve, from the CEO down to management down to the vineyard worker.

I enjoyed that for many, many years before entering religious life. However, I knew, again, that feeling like God’s calling me to work somewhere else. I took a class on the Pope’s encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” That’s how I found Kiss the Ground, the organization from the movie. That movie changed my life.

Can you explain why soil health is so important for the health of the rest of the environment and for people?

I have a T-shirt with a quote from J.I. Rodale, the founder of the Rodale Institute: “Healthy soil equals healthy food equals healthy people.” If you don’t have healthy soil, if you don’t have nutrient-rich, microorganism-rich soil, how can you give anything to the plant? We are eating foods right now that are so devoid of nutrients, yet they look like foods that we’re used to eating.

How did the soil get unhealthy in the first place?

There are multiple ways. I would say the two main ways are all of the synthetic inputs that we’re putting into our soils, anything that ends in “cide”: herbicide, pesticide, fungicide, insecticide. All of those are killing the life within the soil. And heavy tilling as well — we always thought that was what you do, until you see it over a long period of time. But that disturbance of the soil also harms the life within the soil. Part of the regenerative model (of agriculture) is to go low till or no till if you can get away with it, but a lot of places can’t.

How do you connect soil health to the hospital world?

Providence has a framework called WE ACT. It’s a mnemonic. The “W” is waste, the “E” is energy and water, the “A” is agri-

There is software and technology that measures your waste and if you have a whole bunch of, say, sausages leftover from breakfast, it’ll recommend a recipe that includes those sausages for lunch or dinner. There’s food donation programs, again, part of SB 1383. All our hospitals are partnering with local organizations, and thankfully, because of the legislation, there’s a lot of them sprouting up where we can get food into the hands of people who really need to eat it. And to me, that’s the completion of the circle, because we talk about caring for the poor and vulnerable. This is feeding the poor and vulnerable, and many times as well.

Tell us more about your decision to enter religious life.

I was working in human resources for a hotel and living in San Diego at the time. I love going on retreats, and while on retreat several years ago, I met our sisters, who served as spiritual directors. The first night you can speak to the other retreatants and I hit it off with one of our sisters. On that retreat and a few days before that retreat, three people who don’t know each other, and two of them who didn’t really know me at all, asked me the same question: Have you ever considered religious life? I thought, no, no, no.

Anyway, I ignored it for a year. That’s how stubborn I am. But the question and the amazing coincidence was just in the back of my mind the whole time, and I thought, OK, if I’m going to say no, I’m going to say no because I actually looked into this and didn’t base it on preconceived ideas of what you see in media and television. And so I called the sister that I met, and I said, “Does your congregation have anything for a young woman who is looking into religious life?” Of course they do. I’m on that vocation team now.

So when I met our sisters, I felt like, yes, yes, yes. Yes, our spirituality was very similar. Yes, the way we lived our lives, very simply, was very similar. And from an HR standpoint, I thought, this is a great fit. So I continued to pray and I discerned for another year. And it was like, yes, this is where God’s calling me, and I have never looked back.

vhahn@chausa.org

Atlantic and Saint Peter’s are committed to creating healthier communities by removing barriers to access and addressing social determinants of health, said the release. Atlantic and Saint Peter’s integration will require the approval of state and federal officials and the Catholic Church.

Sr. Sara Tarango, Providence St. Joseph Health’s environmental stewardship liaison for southern California, at The Ecology Center, a regenerative organic certified farm in San Juan Capistrano, California, where she volunteers.

Family affair: Fourth-generation nurse embarks on career as her mother readies for retirement

By LORI ROSE

As Patti Lonsway Bihn prepares to retire after 41 years in nursing at Catholic hospitals, her daughter is stepping onto her own path in Catholic health care. They are the third and fourth generations in their family who have made it their lives’ work to care for others.

“I always knew that I wanted to be a nurse and follow in the footsteps of my mother and grandmother,” Bihn said. “I feel like what we do makes a big difference in people’s lives. It’s what has kept me going for 40-plus years, and I am sure it will keep my daughter going as well.”

Bihn, 60, graduated from Mercy School of Nursing (now Mercy College of Ohio and affiliated with Bon Secours Mercy Health) in Toledo in 1983. She has worked in numerous roles, from critical care to community health, with Catholic hospitals in Ohio and Michigan. She plans to retire in July from Trinity Health’s Chelsea Hospital in Michigan.

the fourth generation of Mercy nurses.

All four women chose different tracks in the field, and that illustrates one of the biggest advantages of the profession, Patti Bihn said.

Like mother, like daughter

tal where I work — it’s full circle.”

Experts say the demand for nurses is continuing to rise, as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows. But according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the United States is projected to experience a shortage of registered nurses, with factors such as stress and insufficient staffing — especially in the wake of the pandemic — driving some to leave the profession. For Patti and Jess Bihn, the flexibility — not to mention the satisfaction — of nursing outweighs the challenges.

“You can work in a nursing home, you can work in home care,” Patti Bihn said. “You can work full time, part time, weekends, days, evenings, nights. There are so many different ways to be a nurse. There’s something for everyone.”

Jess Bihn agreed. “I don’t see myself working at the bedside for 41 years, but I think I could have a long career spreading my wings and having new learning opportunities. There’s always another job where you can learn more.”

Both her late mother, Sue Ann Huss Lonsway, and her late grandmother, Lucille Klein Lonsway, graduated from Mercy School of Nursing and went on to nursing careers. Her daughter, Jess Bihn, who received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Mercy College of Ohio in 2018, is

“My grandmother did private duty and she worked for a doctor,” she said. “My mom worked in psych at (Mercy Health’s) St. Charles Hospital in Oregon, Ohio, for 14 years. I remember her getting ready in the morning with the white uniform and the white hose and I remember she made lifelong friends in the profession. And in every role that I’ve been in, I’ve had the wonderful support of co-workers and the belief that what I’m doing is making a difference.”

In turn, Patti Bihn’s work in the field inspired daughter Jess Bihn, who inherited the same sense of care and compassion that led her family members into the profession.

“I remember being with my mom when she was working at blood drives,” said Jess Bihn, 28, who works as an oncology nurse at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital. “I was always her little shadow, pretending to take blood pressure. I just kind of used her medical supplies as toys. There are even nurses working at bedside here (at Ann Arbor) today who remember my mom, and me following her around. I was born at the hospi-

In her role at Trinity Health Ann Arbor, Jess Bihn often meets visiting nursing students. “Something they ask is, how do you keep going?” she said. She knew that sticking to the profession would be challenging but worthwhile.

“Unfortunately, (in oncology) we always have patients on end-of-life care, but it’s an honor to help make them comfortable in their last days. And it’s also fun when we have success stories, when after weeks of inpatient care, we get to help them celebrate as they get wheeled out of the hospital.”

A new beginning

For Patti Bihn, retiring from a profession she has loved is bittersweet, but it brings her comfort to know her daughter is carrying on the family tradition. “I am extremely proud of Jess and her caring and compassionate ways,” she said. “I should be really excited about retiring, but I get teary just thinking about it. It’s a family to me — that’s one of the things I love.”

But Patti Bihn’s hands will not be idle. She plans to volunteer through her parish to develop health and senior ministries to provide fellowship and practical help to community members, especially seniors suffering from social isolation and related health problems.

“I think I’ve always been a helper,” she said. “I will be retiring, but I will continue to use my nursing skills.”

CHRISTUS to open emergency hospital in Palestine, Texas

Our ministry is an enduring sign of health care rooted in the belief that every person is a treasure, every life a sacred gift, every human being a unity of body, mind and spirit. This vibrant video series shines a spotlight on the contributions of CHA member ministries in promoting human dignity and the common good.

CHAUSA.ORG/CATHOLICHEALTH

CHRISTUS Health plans to begin construction on a 20,000-square-foot emergency hospital in Palestine, Texas, this spring. The facility will include a freestanding emergency department, imaging and laboratory services, and an estimated 10 to 15 inpatient beds. It is to open in late summer 2025.

The hospital will be at the Magnolia Medical Plaza, a campus that became part of CHRISTUS in 2017. The facility now offers orthopedic surgery, pain management, cardiology, pulmonary care, gastroenterology and wound care, with some of the services provided by visiting providers from other CHRISTUS facilities.

Chris Glenney, senior vice president for group operations for CHRISTUS Northeast Texas, said in a press release that CHRISTUS is expanding its footprint in Palestine because the system had identified a need for increased access to care.

Palestine has a population of about 18,500. It is about 50 miles southwest of Tyler, Texas, where CHRISTUS has a hospital network.

A plaque given to Patti Lonsway Bihn by her husband features the family's four generations of nurses, the year of their graduation from nursing school and their nursing pins.

Patti Bihn Jess Bihn

Bereavement support

From page 1

it can have on families. Logan and several other perinatal bereavement experts in the ministry say their hospitals have been making a focused effort to build up programs and resources for families suffering the loss of a baby before, during or after birth.

The facilities surround these families with an interdisciplinary team that seeks to understand their goals and wishes and what they are going through. The teams then provide the families with the resources they need to achieve their goals.

“Ninety-nine percent of the families we work with want this help,” says Logan. “They want closure for themselves. And they want their baby to be remembered — that they did exist, they had a story, they had a purpose, they were part of the family.”

Rising infant mortality

According to Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, as many as one in four pregnancies ends in loss, though most occur during the first trimester and often before the mother is aware she’s pregnant. Pregnancy loss that occurs after 20 weeks’ gestation is called stillbirth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 21,000 stillbirths were reported in 2020 in the U.S.

When it comes to post-birth loss, there were 20,538 infant deaths reported in the U.S. in 2022. A November report from the National Center for Health Statistics says that rate is 3% higher than the 2021 rate, the first increase in two decades. The report noted that the most significant increases were among infants born to American Indian, Alaskan Native and white women; infants born to women aged 25 to 29; infants born preterm; and male infants. The agency didn’t speculate on why infant mortality increased.

The Stanford Medicine resource says that there usually are profound impacts on a family regardless of whether the baby’s death occurs before, during or after birth. The baby’s parents, siblings and others can feel shock, numbness, denial, confusion, guilt, anger, yearning, depression, and disorientation among many other emotions, it says.

Intentionality

This may include connecting the family with counseling, spiritual care services and grief support groups and with palliative care for their baby at the end of his or her life. The team also talks with families about how they may wish to memorialize their baby.

Wilson says through the HeartPrints program, “we are acknowledging that losing a loved one is such a difficult time. We are trying to help provide families with items and resources to support them in their grieving. We want to help them in their journey.”

Practical concerns

and adult death — with two-day courses for providers and three-day courses for leaders. Multiple members of St. Mary’s perinatal bereavement team have been certified in bereavement support through Resolve Through Sharing training. They’ve learned to understand family members’ needs and address them.

Hoesley notes the training also covers how best to serve families of different cultures and of different sexual identities, based on some of the beliefs, perceptions and concerns they may have about death and dying.

Full circle

Julie Lazar-Reskakis is the perinatal bereavement specialist at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. Several years ago, she was serving as an endof-life doula when she came across a podcast featuring perinatal loss expert Sherokee Ilse.

The concept of providing perinatal loss services “went right to my heart,” says Lazar-Reskakis. She suffered her own pregnancy losses decades ago and felt her experience had been dismissed, minimized and glossed over by others.

Hearing Ilse speak on perinatal loss “reignited the passion for me,” says LazarReskakis, who quickly signed up and completed Ilse’s training in perinatal bereavement support. Lazar-Reskakis then joined Holy Name two years ago to revive a program that was faltering.

She is a resource for families experiencing perinatal loss, helping them navigate support services. She has been exploring how best to educate clinicians about perinatal loss, especially in hospital departments that are the front line for women in pregnancy crisis. She’s developing resource kits for families impacted by this type of loss and sets up support groups and events for them.

She says through this work everything has come “full circle” for her. “I had felt my own loss had not been recognized. And loss needs to be recognized,” she says. “To help other women and families with this is so personal to me.” jminda@chausa.org

Perinatal loss experts from a sampling of ministry hospitals offering perinatal bereavement programming say they have a passion for helping families prepare for and navigate their loss and grief as well as for supporting them with spiritual and practical aid.

St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, New Hampshire, has a perinatal bereavement support program with four staff members serving as navigators for families whose babies have a terminal diagnosis. The team helps the family understand the baby’s condition and the implications and then helps them access services like counseling and grief support groups.

Ashley Wilson manages Child Life services at Mercy Springfield’s Mercy Kids. She says about a decade ago multiple departments within the Chesterfield, Missouri-based Mercy system recognized that they all were using different approaches to aiding families who had lost a baby. So the hospitals worked together to standardize best practices across the system. They formalized the approaches and established the Mercy HeartPrints program.

When a family learns their baby has a terminal diagnosis, a multidisciplinary team meets with the family. The team includes clinicians, perinatal specialists like Logan, Child Life team members and spiritual care team members. Discussion at the meeting covers the family’s understanding of the diagnosis, its implications, and their goals and desires. They talk about how to navigate difficult medical and ethical decisions and come up with a plan for how to proceed. The plan addresses the needs of the baby and family members.

Wilson says the HeartPrints team then works together to help carry out that plan.

In addition to support ing families with spiritual and behavioral care, the St. Joseph team assists with practicalities like obtain ing a death certificate and accessing free funeral ser vices. “Our navigation services are unique because we combine social work and nursing,” says Nicole Snow, who is a care transitions supervisor and a member of St. Joseph’s perinatal bereavement support team.

She says many families who lose a child may experience “forgotten grief” because other people in their lives may forget that they are grieving a baby who hadn’t been in their lives long. St. Joseph shows them their grief is not forgotten, says Snow.

Specialized training

Brandi Hoesley works in the neonatal intensive care unit of SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital — Madison in Wisconsin and leads the hospital’s perinatal bereavement team.

She says as St. Mary’s was exploring ways to improve its services for families coping with a baby’s terminal diagnosis and death, leaders came across the Resolve Through Sharing bereavement training from Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin. There are training sessions in perinatal, neonatal, pediatric

Logan Snow Lazar-Reskakis

Wilson

Mercy Hospital Springfield in Missouri offers comprehensive support services to families experiencing infant loss. The hospital has partnered with the nonprofit On Angels’ Wings (oawphoto.org) to offer such families free photography sessions with their baby. This is one of the families.

Mementos

From page 1

people are going through.”

St. Mary’s is among many ministry facilities that offer families mementos and other items to honor the dignity of their baby who is dying or who has passed. The items are gifted to the families as part of the facilities’ Catholic health mission. As the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services says, “… as a witness to its faith, a Catholic health care institution will be a community of respect, love, and support to patients or residents and their families as they face the reality of death.”

Passion projects

Joanne Johnson, St. Mary’s director of volunteer services and guest relations, says the wedding dress donation program began around 2019 when a woman who loved sewing and had heard of the concept of creating burial gowns from wedding dresses offered her services.

When St. Mary’s sought out dresses, “there was an outpouring from our community,” with dozens of dresses sent in — even a few from out of state, says Johnson.

She says with the dresses come touching notes and stories from the donors. When a couple sent the dress of their daughter who had died of brain cancer, they included a photo of the woman in her dress along with a note for St. Mary’s to share with the family whose baby would benefit from the gown. That note spoke of how their daughter would have been honored to help a family in this way. Another donor wrote that she was giving her dress in honor of her mother, who had died. The donor wrote that the dress had been made with love by her mom, and now a little one could be wrapped in that love.

The donors “want to bring comfort to those who have had this loss,” Johnson says. “These mementos are very meaningful —

Conduit

From page 1

satisfaction increased,” said Lisa Lilley, CHRISTUS vice president of ambulatory quality and risk. “It was a huge win.”

CHRISTUS is among more than two dozen organizations that have signed on with Conduit Health Partners. Many more engage Conduit through a subcontractor relationship. Conduit, which is a for-profit subsidiary of Bon Secours Mercy Health, provides around-the-clock nurse triage, patient transfer, virtual care, patient scheduling and other solutions that improve access to care.

>> A music therapist with Avera Health hospice helps dying patients create mementos for their families using recordings of the patients’ heartbeats. Visit chausa.org/chw to learn more.

we honor and respect life, regardless of how long that life was.”

The seamstress uses the embellishments from each dress to make original designs. She can make several gowns from one dress. When the gowns are completed, Johnson sends them as well as any messages from the donors to the neonatal intensive care unit, where they are placed in a special space called Olivia’s Room.

Comfort for donor, recipient

A team in the neonatal intensive care unit created Olivia’s Room about a dozen years ago in honor of a baby who was stillborn. The team wanted a place to keep all of the materials they had on hand to “help families go through the journey of grief,” says Brandi Hoesley, who works in St. Mary’s NICU and serves on its perinatal bereavement team.

tem vice president of access, she was asked by the system’s President and CEO John Starcher to explore how to employ some of the principles she’d learned from for-profit HMA to improve patient access at Mercy Health. (Starcher now heads Bon Secours Mercy Health.) Dalton-Norman focused on the area of patient transfers, which she calls the “bread-and-butter of the for-profit world.”

In the room there is a “cuddle cot” that can be rolled into the room of a mother whose baby has been stillborn. This hightech bassinet keeps the baby’s body cool to slow bodily changes. This gives the family more time to spend with the baby before they have to say goodbye.

Olivia’s Room also contains numerous items for creating keepsakes for families, such as necklaces and memory boxes. Many of the materials were donated by individuals and foundations in memory of children who have died.

Something tangible

As part of the HeartPrints program, hospitals within the Chesterfield, Missouribased Mercy system ensure they have items at the ready to provide to families whose babies are dying or have died. Ashley Wilson, who manages Child Life services at Mercy Kids hospital at Mercy Hospital Springfield in Missouri, says it is important to many families who are going through this grief and trauma to have something tangible. The hospitals offer similar mementos for families served by pediatric units.

Wilson’s colleague Lisa Logan, neonatal clinical nurse educator and bereavement coordinator, says many parents whose babies die during pregnancy or shortly after birth do not have many material items to help them remember their children. In some cases, women arrive expecting a healthy delivery, are put under anesthesia, and when complications arise, they awake to learn their baby did not survive.

To complement HeartPrints’ emotional and spiritual services, Mercy Springfield offers — through the generosity of donors — gifts to these families. Those items can include photos of the baby and family in the hospital, a personalized scrapbook, teddy bears that contain a recording of the baby’s heartbeat, bracelets with beads spelling out the baby’s name, fingerprint charms for necklaces, handmade afghans, molds and ink prints of the baby’s handprints and foot-

owned by the for-profit arm of Bon Secours Mercy, which is called Health Span.

prints, personalized decorative plates and memory boxes. Parents can choose a combination of mementos.

Giving control, options

For Julie Lazar-Reskakis, it is important to offer grieving parents many choices for keepsakes. Lazar-Reskakis, perinatal bereavement specialist at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, says, “There is such a loss of control when a parent loses a baby.” Through the bereavement services she can provide and through the mementos she has on hand, she tries to give families many options, so they can feel like they are gaining at least a small measure of control.

Similar to the group at Mercy Springfield, Holy Name works with volunteers to offer families of stillborn babies a professional photography session. Lazar-Reskakis has numerous items handmade by donors to give them, including layettes and blankets. She can provide personalized crib cards. She can provide inked footprints and handprints. Most of what she can provide, or the materials to create the items, are from donors who wish to bless families experiencing a loss.

One donor provides personal care bags for the moms with slippers, shower accessories, a journal, forget-me-not seeds, a small ring honoring their baby and informational resources for after discharge.

Lazar-Reskakis says she presents the keepsake options to parents and helps them decide which combination of items will be most appropriate for their family. It doesn’t matter what stage of life — before, during or after birth — the loss has happened, LazarReskakis says, a family can use support.

“We have to condense a lifetime of memories into these moments,” she says.

“I want to help them minimize regrets,” she adds. “I don’t want them to have to think, ‘I wish I would have.’”

jminda@chausa.org

ing data generated by the calls its nurses handle, and that data has been useful in making decisions about the clinic network. For instance, data has shown when call volumes are high during clinic off-hours, which could suggest to leaders which clinics should slightly extend their hours.

When companies outsource these functions to Conduit, experts there can save employees time, increase patient engagement and satisfaction, get access to data about interactions with patients and get analysis on their business operations, said Cheryl Dalton-Norman, Conduit founder and president.

Lessons from

for-profits

Dalton-Norman began her career in nursing in 1983 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, a Sisters of Mercy hospital that would eventually become part of the Catholic Health Partners system. By the time Health Management Associates acquired that hospital in 2011, Dalton-Norman was on the hospital leadership team, and she remained in the executive ranks under the new owner. In 2014, she accepted an executive position having to do with cultural integration and learning with Catholic Health Partners’ successor, Mercy Health.

After Mercy Health promoted her to sys-

A team of nurses established under Dalton-Norman’s leadership handled all the logistics, coordination and communication around transferring patients to the most appropriate point of care. The focus was on removing barriers and easing communication among providers while routing patients to a Mercy Health hospital, when possible and appropriate. The team handling the patient transfers also prioritized data collection and analysis — supplying leadership with statistics and insights that could inform operational decisions.

Next, Dalton-Norman tackled the challenge of Mercy Health’s own staff members, who frequently turned to the emergency department for their own care rather than accessing it at more appropriate care sites. Her team led the formation of a nurse triage team that fielded calls from the health system’s employees. The nurses’ goal: to understand the callers’ needs and then help them access care at the best site.

Incubation in Mercy, then spinoff

Employee satisfaction with the nurse triage service was so high that DaltonNorman and the leadership team at Mercy Health “realized we had something of value for many different stakeholders.” And so they took steps to spin the patient transfer and nurse triage services off as a separate company headed by Dalton-Norman that would market these and other services.

Shortly after that, Mercy Health merged with Bon Secours Health System to form Bon Secours Mercy Health. Conduit is

In its years of operation, Conduit has expanded its offerings. It now offers patient transfer and nurse triage services as well as virtual care and hospital-at-home care, patient scheduling and call center services. Conduit has more than 230 team members, with more than 125 of them registered nurses who provide all the clinical patientfacing services. All Conduit employees work remotely.

Conduit’s clients include health systems, federally qualified health centers, health plans, social service providers, medical device manufacturers, employers and others. Conduit’s registered nurses have handled more than 10 million calls in 48 states on behalf of their clients since Conduit began marketing its services.

Conduit has different contractual terms based on the clients’ needs — some clients pay per call handled, some pay per member per month.

Nurse first

Dalton-Norman said Conduit clients report multiple benefits from outsourcing these call center-type functions. The clients have freed their clinicians and other staff from such responsibilities. The clients also have seen increased patient satisfaction because Conduit uses a “nurse first” approach — nurses handle all incoming and outgoing clinical calls, so patients can get even their clinical questions answered right away, without having to call around to multiple numbers or struggle through phone system prompts.

CHRISTUS’ Lilley said that system’s clinic network, which spans Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, has been using Conduit since October for nurse triage services, patient scheduling, outreach calls to patients and incoming and outgoing patient calls on clinic off-hours.

Lilley noted Conduit has been provid-

Additionally, Lilley said, CHRISTUS’ clinic network has grown 40% in two years and is still expanding. Conduit has been able to keep up with that growth.

Lilley mentioned that having Conduit handling calls will mean that even if there is a localized weather emergency such as a hurricane, the Conduit nurses will be able to field calls because they work from their homes all around the country.

On-the-spot care

Dalton-Norman said many Conduit executives and nurses come from Catholic health care, as she did, and they’ve applied that expertise to working with the vulnerable patients and clients of the organizations that Conduit serves.

Multiple Catholic Charities locations use Conduit nurses to staff the agency’s Nurse Disrupted partner organization. Nurse Disrupted places electronic care stations in Catholic Charities shelters so that those shelters’ clients can quickly access a Conduit nurse. With the press of a button, clients can reach a nurse on the triage line and get help with their medical needs.

This arrangement has resulted in “significant savings” in health care costs, according to a Catholic Charities blog post on the service. The savings accrued because the Catholic Charities clients no longer go first to the emergency department — they work with the nurse line to discuss how they should handle their ailment.

Dalton-Norman said, “as we’re improving access, we’re improving lives. And we’re always asking ourselves how we can do that better.”

jminda@chausa.org

Lilley

Dalton-Norman

Boatwright

From page 1

rural health care.

His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the key points you’d like people in the ministry to know about these closures?

Our situation in Western Wisconsin is a wake-up call about the crisis rural providers are facing in general and in particular what has been a reoccurring issue in Catholic health care, because historically we serve rural areas. Hospital Sisters, as a Catholic ministry, went through a very thoughtful and formal discernment process to make this decision and that gives us comfort that we came to this decision in alignment with our mission and core values.

Although this was difficult and heartbreaking, I honestly feel like Catholic organizations have to make the tough decisions so they can be stronger and better carry out their own mission for their sisters for the next century.

What was it about the Western Wisconsin market and these particular facilities that made them so vulnerable to some of the pressures hitting rural markets?

The Chippewa Valley region is similar to many other small rural areas where Hospital Sisters have facilities and where Catholic health care has facilities. And many of these communities are suffering from decreases in patient population and patients are deferring health care services due to increased out-of-pocket costs, inflation, labor shortages, high labor costs, access issues.

What’s different in this particular market is that there are four hospitals serving this one rural area.

The sisters and our ministry were in this market for 140 years approximately. For 115 years we were the only ones in the market, which is a similar story to most Catholic organizations in rural markets. Well, in the last 25 years a lot more competition entered into these areas.

We know how to compete. But there’s a point where you’re competing with “enough resources” in an area versus a surplus of resources in an area.

How did payer mix factor into the dynamics in this market?

HSHS is here to serve all patient populations, that’s a hallmark of Catholic health care. We’ve been willing to step up and do that any time we’ve been asked to do so. And for 115 years, we did that successfully. The question is over the last 25 years, what were the new dynamics?

What is so interesting is that more than 60% of the region’s indigent population, Medicaid and Medicare population all ended up in our facilities, not spread out equally among all four hospitals.

What other approaches did HSHS try before deciding on closure?

We did things that most organizations do: we tried to turn things around through operational improvements, we tried to make service mix changes, we had some labor force initiatives and rightsizing — all these things people are familiar with. We tried to rebuild our medical staff by employing our own doctors.

Then we also took an extraordinary step and tried to create our own insurance company and plan to roll out in the market. It was a commercial product, and it lowered the cost of care for those who signed up for that narrow network product. In hindsight, if there had not been many options in that community, it could have worked successfully. But the community had more than enough health care offerings and people wanted choice. That’s what we found out. People wanted as much choice as possible and so that strategy did not work as effectively as we would have liked.

What did HSHS do when those strategies failed?

After trying all those things, we realized it would not work for us to continue the way we had been operating and so we sought strategic alternatives for these hospitals and our Prevea physician partner. Prevea is an aligned medical group we have a professional service agreement with in Wisconsin.

We worked with experienced national third-party industry experts to analyze utilization data, labor and supply costs, and all other relevant information to develop a feasible path forward. That also included identifying potential partners. They included other Catholic health partners — and we gave them first right of refusal.

In 2023 we were able to identify only one potential partner that just happened to be non-Catholic to work with towards an agreement. The idea was to try to turn operations over to them.

After six months of due diligence — the whole process took nine months — our one potential partner came to the same conclusion: In this current environment and given the market dynamic that existed in Western Wisconsin, there was no feasible path. The market is oversupplied. Plus, you need a reliable physician partner, committed to work with you, to advance your mission and to be the provider of choice in that area.

What did the discernment process look like for this decision?

As a Catholic organization, our goal is to simultaneously live our value commitments and make sound financial decisions. It is not “either/or,” but “and.” It doesn’t mean we avoid hard decisions like closing a hospital, but it does mean we have to consider our values as we make such decisions.

So, for difficult decisions with significant implications for our colleagues, and patients and mission, we intentionally use our formal discernment process that helps ensure decision-makers consider our values, explore and exhaust all alternatives and mitigate negative implications to the degree possible.

There are two distinct discernment processes that were undertaken at HSHS in respect to the decision about the Western Wisconsin hospitals. The first was regarding the decision to seek a partner or buyer and the second was regarding the decision to close after no buyers were interested in assuming ownership despite our willingness to transfer the hospitals in a cashless transaction. That’s another key: It would have been a cashless transaction, they’d get our hospitals for free.

So after receiving the news that the Catholic systems we contacted did not want to move forward and that our one nonCatholic partner could not move forward, we revisited our discernment process and once again discussed the situation with both boards — our operating board and our ministerial board. Our shared conclusion is that we have no other option but to exit the Western Wisconsin region.

We kept our governing and ministerial

boards and the sisters apprised throughout the process, and we actually did three levels of discernment. We did discernment for my senior executive team, and that included individuals and leaders in the Western Wisconsin market where these hospitals would be impacted. We did a second level of discernment at the operating/governing board level. And then we did a final and third discernment at the ministerial board level that included our sisters. And we not only shared data about the market and the challenges but also how we would work diligently to prepare a carefully thought-out plan to exit the market. This included multiple discussions with various stakeholders throughout shared services to make sure that this was in line with our mission and our values. In addition, the plan was carried out in a very thoughtful way and in consideration of who we are as an organization. And as I look back, this was an 18-month to two-year discernment.

In addition to pushback you received in the community, did you also get support?

We did end up getting support from the market as we moved along in this process. We are at a point where in the beginning it is quite emotional and heartbreaking and in fact it became very personal for individual colleagues as well as community members who have relied on us for over a century.

As I look back to where we started and where we are now, it was very similar to going through psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief.

In the beginning when people heard the news it was outright denial, like “I don’t believe this, this is not happening to us,” and then it quickly got to a lot of anger. Then we had certain groups that had a vested financial interest in us remaining open because it may impact their own business model, such as vendors, and they were trying to negotiate something different. But once we got through that — and that took about three weeks or so — and people started to process where do we go from here, including the media, then it became very productive, and even constructive, with people trying to find solutions to make this transition happen as effectively as possible for all stakeholders involved.

The media, of course, in the beginning tended to oversimply and focus on the most dramatic elements of this story. But I can tell you that in our direct conversations with public leaders, private leaders and elected officials, no one at all disputes the facts. They don’t like the decision, but no one disputes the difficulties, the challenges, that we face and the unique scenario that impacted us as the rural provider.

I think that this truly is a wake-up call for many people about the rural health care network, that they really are in trouble and that there needs to be regulatory intervention in some cases, there needs to be financial support almost in every case and there needs to be more sympathy as well as empathy for the struggles that are impacting Catholic rural health care providers

in particular. And let’s not wait until you hear that they are closing to say we need to respond now and find a way to help these hospitals stay open.

And I think in rural areas, you need a private and public and community collaboration in order to make it work. All the onus should not be put on one entity. You need everyone set up to sustain the right health care resources for that community.

How is HSHS staying true to its mission when it comes to how it is exiting the market?

Many other organizations in similar circumstances that are not Catholic would have just left the market. Instead, what we decided to do was reach out to the other health care providers to say we want your help in collaborating and trying to figure out safe care transition plans for all of our patients.

We reached out early to elected officials to give them a heads-up that this was occurring so they wouldn’t be caught off guard and so they could hopefully provide calm, reassuring messaging to our community members. We connected with local community members like those on our local boards and we provided talking points to them that were consistent with what I was sharing with our own colleagues around how we got here and where do we go from here.

I am also proud when I think about how we revealed and embodied the healing love of Jesus for our own colleagues who might be hurting. We proactively led job fairs, even though we still had hospitals to run.

We wanted to make sure that we took care and helped them find employment if we could and provided them benefits like severances in the event that they were without a job right after the close. We also had virtual EAP resources on-site to help them go through this.

Other organizations may have just cut and run without any regard to the collateral damage caused by this, but we wanted to continue to lead with our values and do the right thing even though people may not have been ready for this.

What do you see as a main takeaway for the ministry?

It is important for us and all CHA members to continue to understand the importance of advocacy, advocacy, advocacy, and our ability to retain our nonprofit status.

We’re not for profit, we do not want to behave like the for-profits do. So, us advocating to protect our mission focus for our communities, and treat their whole body, mind and spirit, I think there is still relevance for that model in health care.

Just by the reaction we’re hearing now that we’ve said we’re closing, I think people realize the importance of having Catholic health care in their communities. Advocacy, if we’re doing it right, helps them realize this before it’s too late.

HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, traces its roots to 1889, when a group of Hospital Sisters arrived to establish health care in the community. The sisters first provided care in a private residence then opened a three-story hospital in 1890.

The Hospital Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis came to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, on June 28, 1885, at the invitation of Fr. Charles Goldsmith, the first and only pastor in Chippewa Falls at the time. The sale of hospital tickets to loggers funded the procurement of the property and building additions.

KEEPING UP

PRESIDENTS/CEOS

Meghan Aldrich to president of Sisters of Charity Hospital and St. Joseph Campus in Buffalo, New York, effective April 15. The campuses are part of Buffalo-based Catholic

Co-caring teams

From page 1

heard. I didn’t have to be rushed anymore.”

Covenant Medical Center has been piloting the co-caring model, a hybrid with a virtual nurse splitting duties with a bedside team of a registered nurse and a nursing assistant, in an inpatient unit since 2021.

Covenant Medical Center’s parent, Providence St. Joseph Health, is planning a wide expansion of the model this year.

By nurses for nurses

Sylvain Trepanier, chief nursing officer at Providence, says co-caring works because it was developed by nurses for nurses.

To develop co-caring, Trepanier said Providence invited nurses to reconsider how they go about their work and how to better meet the needs of patients. The system then handed off the nonessential work the nurses were doing to other staff members.

“By creating a new team that would share responsibility and accountability with a nurse that would be working virtually, we

Health. Previously, Aldrich was chief operating officer for Heritage Ministries, a senior services provider operating in New York and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Bradley T. Lembcke to president of Houston, Texas-based Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, from interim president. Lembcke is also chief medical officer for CommonSpirit Health’s south region. He will retain that role until CommonSpirit selects his successor. Baylor St. Luke’s is the flagship academic medical institution of CommonSpirit’s St. Luke’s Health System.

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES

Jennifer Brown to chief legal officer and senior vice president of Chesterfield, Missouri-based Mercy.

Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health and a subsidiary have made these changes: Travis Crum to chief financial officer of Bon Secours Mercy Health, effective July 1; and Robin Baldauf to chief nursing officer for Bon Secours — Hampton Roads in Virginia.

Our Lady of Lourdes Health, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health

System of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has made these changes: Christi Pierce to chief operating officer and Jeremy Rogers to chief financial officer.

Dr. Ashish Tokhi to chief physician executive of HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Illinois.

Kyle Donovan to vice president of operations for Mount St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, New York, and for Mount St. Mary’s new Lockport Memorial Campus. The campuses are part of Buffalo, New York-based Catholic Health.

when I first started as a nurse, yet we still approach the work the same way. Nurses are given a group of patients, and they do their thing.”

Given the intense current demand for their services, nurses need to practice at the top of their license and the best way to do that is to have support teams take over some of the simpler chores such as checking vital signs, Trepanier said. Meanwhile, other duties now can easily be done remotely.

“All of the instruction, education, care coordination, all of that stuff can be done virtually,” Trepanier said. “And it’s oftentimes seen by the nurse at the bedside as an administrative burden. They need to have visual cues and access the patient, but accessing the patient virtually is equally effective. And we’ve been able to demonstrate that.”

In addition to splitting duties with the bedside crew, the virtual nurses remote in for regular team meetings with charge nurses, case managers and physicians.

Team effort

From her point of view, Wilson said, benefits from co-caring grow best when there is good teamwork between the virtual nurse and those who are working on the floor.

“It has to start with the bedside staff really taking the time to explain,” Wilson said. “I have had patients as old as 101 years old that love this. Once the patients get to the room, as long as that bedside staff does a very good job explaining what we’re going to be doing, it works.”

have people showing up every day doing the work that they love to do and removing some of the barriers that they had in doing it the old traditional way,” he said.

Still, the co-caring model raised serious questions at first, about confidentiality and the human touch.

“All of a sudden there was a camera,” Trepanier said, “and someone could see and hear what was going on in the room at all times. We were very quick to articulate that no one could listen unless the camera is on and if it looks their way.

“Sometimes, if you use the nomenclature ‘virtual nurses,’ it’s almost like there’s this perception an avatar has been created,” he added. “The work itself is the same. What differentiates us is that we’ve completely deconstructed how we approach the work and we supplement it with virtual as well. Hence co-caring, where we’re caring for patients, being both physically present and virtually present in a team effort.”

By the numbers

The success of the co-caring model shows up in the numbers, Trepanier said, with turnover rates in the first year down by 73% for registered nurses and 55% for all staff in the pilot unit at Covenant Medical Center.

Trepanier said employee retention along with other efficiencies, such as a reduced need for costly travel nurses and shorter patient stays, added up to significant savings in the pilot’s first year. “On a 30-bed unit, we ended up having a return on our investment of roughly $450,000,” he said.

He added: “Our patients are happier, our

nurses are happier, and we’re decreasing our total cost of care, which is what everyone should be after.”

The numbers point to efficiencies aside from cost savings. For example, in the past, once a doctor wrote a discharge order, it took four hours to get a patient ready to leave. In the co-caring model, the work is done virtually with the process starting the day before and the time needed cut to 80 minutes.

Such efficiencies help sell nurses on the co-caring system and working from home, Trepanier said.

“We know that the average age of a nurse has gone up and up and up, and many are starting to think about retirement in the next few years,” he said. “What a great opportunity, to be able to continue to practice and to support patients where (they) don’t have to be on (their) feet for 12 hours a day for three days in a row. That’s what we need. We need to bring in more people and to retain those who are practicing today.”

Following co-caring’s success in Lubbock, Providence is expanding the model to 50 units across its seven-state footprint by the end of this year. Most of the units will be adult inpatient ones, such as medical/surgical, telemetry, step down and orthopedics.

Overcoming inertia

What has stopped hospitals from adopting models like the co-caring one with virtual caregivers until now? Trepanier said a lot of the problem has been simple inertia.

“I’ve been a nurse for 35 years this year,” he said. “The world has changed. You have all sorts of widgets that we didn’t have

Some patients, Wilson said, are simply lonely and scared and can benefit by knowing someone is as close as the push of a button. In some situations, she added, that button can be a lifesaver.

“There was a patient that was having a heart attack as I came into her room (remotely),” she recalled. “I was able to immediately address her chest pain and we were able to get the chargers in quickly and immediately get the cardiologist there. There’s no telling how much heart muscle we saved for her.”

Working differently

The difference from co-caring has been pretty close to what managers like Trepanier envisioned.

“Quite frankly, when we embraced this, even if we could cover our costs and it would be cost neutral, it would be a great proposition,” he said. “The pleasant surprise of this is that we’re elevating the practice of nurses, the technicians feel a part of the team, and the patients are having a good experience. We’re having great operational outcomes and decreasing the total cost of care.”

That’s good for the present, Trepanier said, and definitely bodes well for the future.

“If we don’t do this, we are going to run out of time in health care,” he said. “I recognize that not everyone has the resources and not everyone has the capability of pulling something off like that. I also am very cognizant that the status quo is not an option.

“For the sake of our patients and for the sake of the health of the communities that we serve, we all need to lean in and figure out how to approach the work differently.”

Trepanier

Aldrich Lembcke Brown

Maria Yanez, a certified nursing assistant, at left, and Hannah Fish, patient experience manager, interact with virtual nurse Lea Kirkman to better understand what the co-caring experience is like for patients at Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas. The hospital piloted the co-caring model, which is being expanded to many other Providence St. Joseph Health hospitals.

Contact Madeline Hantak at mhantak@chausa.org for

2024 2024 AWARDS 2 24

RECOGNIZING EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CATHOLIC HEALTH MINISTRY

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

For a lifetime of contributions

RON HAMEL, PH.D.

Past Member

SSM Health Ministries, St Louis, Missouri

Board of Directors

SSM Health, St Louis, Missouri

SISTER CAROL KEEHAN AWARD

For boldly championing society’s most vulnerable

DORI LESLIE

President

CHI Friendship, Fargo, North Dakota

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TOMORROW’S LEADERS

Honoring young people who will guide our ministry in the future

RACHELLE BARINA

Chief Mission Officer

Hospital Sisters Health System, Springfield, Illinois

CARRIE MEYER MCGRATH

System Director, Formation Design and Delivery

CommonSpirit Health, Chicago, Illinois

BRIDGET FITZPATRICK

Chief Operating Officer

Richmond Community Hospital, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Richmond, Virginia

CALEB TOWNES

Director of Consumer Patient Experience

Ascension Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama

SAM PROKOPEC

Executive Director

St. Joseph’s Elder Services, West Point, Nebraska

THOMAS KLEIN, FACHE

Chief Operating Officer

Ascension Medical Group Michigan, Warren, Michigan

SHEKINAH SINGLETERY

Director of Community Health & Well-Being

Trinity Health Ann Arbor and Livingston Hospitals, Livonia, Michigan

DAN WOODS, MSN, RN

Senior Director of Emergency Services and Hospital Throughput

St. Dominic-Jackson Memorial Hospital, Jackson, Mississippi

FAITH HALFORD

Systems Manager Materials Management

St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System Savannah, Georgia

ZACH ZIRKELBACH

Chief Financial Officer

Ascension St. Vincent, Evansville, Indiana

MEGAN TIMM

Regional Director of Community Health

SSM Health

St. Mary’s Hospital, Janesville, Wisconsin

HALEY BUSCH, PHARMD, BCPS

Quality Manager, Opioid Stewardship Program Coordinator

CHI Saint Joseph Health, Lexington, Kentucky