Catholic Health World - June 1, 2021

Disparities in obstetrics care 7 Executive changes 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION

JUNE 1, 2021 VOLUME 37, NUMBER 9

Hospitals rejoice as volunteers return to duty

Ministry rallies to meet uptick in need for behavioral health care Pandemic stressors drive increased depression, anxiety, substance abuse

By JULIE MINDA

New rules are in place to keep community helpers safe as the pandemic lingers

By LISA EISENHAUER

Karen Elshout/© CHA

While she was sidelined from her volunteer duties at Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown, Kentucky, last summer, Rita Carter experienced the hospital as a patient.

A 3-D mammogram revealed a cancerous lump and she underwent surgery and radiation therapy in the same cancer center where she has spent years restocking

Ashley Schnitker and her son wait in the reception area at SSM Health Behavioral Health Urgent Care at SSM Health DePaul Hospital in suburban St. Louis in May.

During the long pandemic, there has been widespread fear of contagion, death and grief, isolation, economic stress from job loss, emotional pain and outrage over police and vigilante killings of Black Americans and angst over civil unrest and political strife.

“It’s been an unbelievable year, to say the least, and for the first time in generations we can say that almost everyone has been affected by the challenges in Spieth some meaningful way,” says Russell Spieth, director of outpatient services at Rosary Hall, an addiction services facility at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland, part of Sisters of Charity Health System.

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Health systems say virtual work is here to stay Once seen as a temporary fix, remote work could become permanent option for many workers Bob Jewell enters a patient room at Mercy Hospital South in suburban St. Louis. Jewell volunteers as a patient representative at the hospital and a Eucharistic minister at its behavioral health center.

By LISA EISENHAUER

supplies for the nursing staff and escorting patients to chemotherapy rooms a couple of days a week. By January, testing showed no signs of cancer, proof to her that she had gotten the best of treatment.

“I just feel so fortunate that we have this excellent facility right here in town,” Carter says.

Keeping the hospital in the community

For tens of thousands of nonclinical staff members at Catholic health systems, the COVID-19 pandemic may have brought a permanent end to work life as they knew it.

Human resources executives from three systems say that associates who were told to work remotely when the pandemic began probably will not be required to return to their former work sites full time. In addition, the on-site work spaces that they will occasionally report to won’t have personal offices for most of them.

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Joe Filigno is among the hundreds of workers Bon Secours Mercy Health sent home from the system’s main offices in Cincinnati to work remotely beginning in mid-March 2020. Filigno, system director for workforce insight and activation, says he and his team have increased their productivity since making the move to home offices.

U.S. Catholic health systems among those aiding countries hit by COVID outbreaks Overseas providers in desperate need of funding, oxygen supplies, PPE

Mid-spring brought crisis levels of coronavirus infections to several countries around the world that were underresourced and unprepared to ward off outbreaks and treat the sick.

According to World Health Organization data dated May 18, India had reported more than 25 million of the 163 million confirmed cases of COVID worldwide and more than 278,000 of the more than 3 million deaths.

“As I’m sitting here in India today, the situation is very, very grim, and we’ve never felt so helpless as we do now,” Sr. Beena Devasia Madhavath said during a Global

Amit Sharma/AP Photo

By JULIE MINDA

At a crematorium in New Delhi, India, on May 11, a mourner in personal protective equipment prays in front of the burning funeral pyre of his father who died of COVID-19. As of May 18, India had reported more than 25 million cases of COVID.

Health Networking videoconference that CHA held via Zoom on May 5. Sr. Devasia Madhavath is an Ursuline of Mary Immaculate sister stationed in Mumbai who heads the Sister Doctors Forum of India.

“There is a scarcity of (hospital) beds and essential medications and oxygen,” said Fr. Mathew Abraham on the call. He is the immediate past director-general of the Catholic Health Association of India.

“There is a lot of death,” Bishop Julius Marandi of Dumka said on the call.

COVID was also surging in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay throughout the spring, overwhelming the health care infrastructure and causing mass illness and death. In all these nations, providers have been hamstrung by extreme shortages of personal protective equipment, testing supplies, therapeutic medicines, oxygen, Continued on 8

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CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD June 1, 2021

Volunteers return From page 1

of about 14,000 open and thriving is one of her motivations for volunteering at the facility, part of CHI Saint Joseph Health, based in Lexington, Kentucky. The system is part of CommonSpirit Health.

She had no reservations about returning this spring when the health system reopened its doors to volunteers. “I feel really good about it,” Carter says. “I feel like they’re taking all the needed precautions.”

Catholic hospitals and health systems across the nation are eagerly welcoming volunteers back as COVID-19 cases decline and vaccination rates rise. The helpers aren’t being given all of their old assignments because of lingering fears of infection, but they are finding plenty of opportunities to share their time and talents.

Parking lot ministrations As president of the CHI Saint Joseph Health Foundations that support CHI Saint Joseph Health, Leslie Smart coordinates the work of Carter and other volunteers who officially returned to the system’s facilities on April Smart 19. Smart says their assistance was dearly missed during the 407 days when they were kept off-site for their own safety.

Even when they weren’t physically present, Smart says the volunteers kept up their good deeds. They sent notes of encouragement and dropped off food donations for hospital staff, knitted caps for newborns and sewed cloth masks for the community.

Some volunteers also assisted with a “parking lot ministry” for loved ones of patients who couldn’t come inside hospitals because of pandemic precautions. The volunteers worked with chaplains providing spiritual care to would-be visitors waiting outside, handing out snacks and tiny prayer quilts with comforting messages and wooden hearts inside them.

When the volunteers were allowed back into the hospital, Smart says the scene was emotional. She recalls her own greeting to one of them. “I said, ‘You have no idea how much we’ve missed you,’ and she said,

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‘Oh, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.’”

Back in the saddle Jane Thorpe volunteers with her friend Leslyn Randazzo at Mercy Hospital Lebanon in southwestern Missouri. She was so eager to get back on duty as a patient escort that she asked the hospital’s volunteer coordinator every week when she could return.

Janice Gold plays piano in the lobby of Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexing“I missed the contact ton, Kentucky. Her husband, Tom, a retired pastor, also volunteers at with people and the feel- the hospital. He assists the hospital’s spiritual care team. ing you get when you help people,” Thorpe says. high-risk situations, such as with patients Randazzo says she was equally eager to who are known or suspected to have return. “I needed to be doing something, COVID,” she says.

Kroll is on a systemwide multidisciespecially in the winter, when I can’t ride my horse,” she says. plinary committee that has developed poliThe friends are featured along with Bob cies for the safe return of volunteers. Her Jewell, a volunteer at Mercy Hospital South advice to the committee has been based in suburban St. Louis, in a video that the on recommendations from the Centers for Mercy system released on April 15 to herald Disease Control and Prevention and other the return of its volunteers. Jewell spends health agencies as well as on what she’s several hours each week as a patient repre- learned about practices at other systems sentative at the hospital and a Eucharistic through her participation in two ongoing forums. One of those forums is facilitated by minister at its behavioral health center.

“It’s self-fulfilling,” he says of his volun- CHA. “Those dialogues were really helpful for teer work. “There are so many rewards that you get by visiting patients and checking in me while I figured out what our approach would be because there are no hard and fast on them.”

Like Thorpe and Randazzo, he says he CDC rules or guidelines around” the return got a vaccination as soon as he could, so of volunteers, she says.

In early May the Pacific Northwest, he’d be ready to return when Mercy called, although the system is not requiring volun- where PeaceHealth is based, appeared to be on the verge of another heavy bout teers to be vaccinated. with COVID. Kroll wasn’t worried that the system might be putting volunteers at risk Drafting safety policies Catherine Kroll, direc- inside its hospitals. Even if some voluntor of infection prevention teers choose not to be vaccinated, precaufor PeaceHealth, says that tions such as masks and plexiglass barriers her system and others she should provide adequate protection from has been consulting with the virus, she says. on pandemic practices also “Despite the fact that we’re headed are not requiring volun- into this fourth wave of infections, I feel a Kroll teers to be vaccinated. “We lot more optimism and a lot calmer about at PeaceHealth are strongly encouraging it, how to keep people safe,” she says. “And I and we also are not using volunteers in any have a lot fewer sleepless nights than I did

a year ago.”

If the incidence rate of the virus moves to what’s considered a dangerous point in any of the communities where PeaceHealth operates, Kroll says the system would reevaluate volunteer activities.

Helping draft the policies for volunteer work has given Kroll a new appreciation for how integral their contributions are to the system. She was unaware, for example, that to qualify for certification with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 5% of the staffing of hospice programs has to be by volunteers. That rule has been waived during the pandemic, but Kroll says it will go back into effect soon.

Riding the wave Brett Kinman, administrator of CHRISTUS St. Michael Hospital – Atlanta, says volunteers are essential to keeping his 25-bed facility in east Texas connected to the community of about 5,500 people.

Kinman He says he was beaming under his mask in early May when about two dozen of those volunteers showed up for an appreciation and welcome back luncheon.

“We reached our capacity to be in the room and socially distanced for the lunch.

That was just really impressive,” he says. “I think it goes back to our small community and the support that our local volunteers have for our facility and the mission of our organization.”

He estimates that about 80% of the helpers who run its gift shop, greet people at the reception desk and perform other unpaid duties plan to return.

“As much as I’m super excited about them being there, long term I’m kind of worried about volunteer programs and how many people are going to volunteer with this extra little issue that’s going to be in the back of their minds,” Kinman says, alluding to lingering infection fears. “But right now, I want to ride the wave and enjoy having volunteers back in the building.” leisenhauer@chausa.org

Cheers greet return of furry volunteers at Ascension St. Vincent A

fter a year of being banished to the outdoors because of the COVID-19 pandemic, tails are wagging again inside Ascension St. Vincent facilities in and around Indianapolis.

Therapy dogs from the nonprofit Paws & Think this spring resumed their mission of lifting spirits by allowing the system’s staff members to pet and hug them.

“There is so much scientific research that backs the benefits that this provides for people, including decreasing blood pressure and increasing all the good, happy endorphins that you get when you touch and interact with a dog,” says Kelsey Burton, executive director of Paws & Think.

Her organization has 24 trained teams of one dog and its human who visit Ascension sites, including Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital. As of mid-May, the teams were still not allowed in patient rooms.

Kaitlin Knapp, manager of Ascension St. Vincent’s healing arts program, hopes to reintroduce in-person patient visits soon.

She says the hospital is following infection prevention recommendations from experts on the reintroduction of volunteers to patient-facing care.

In the meantime, patients can continue to watch videos of Paws & Think’s furry volunteers on the system’s closed-circuit TV channel and get personal virtual visits via iPad. Paws & Think in May kicked off its 20th anniversary with a celebration outside the children’s hospital. The event drew some of the patients, including Ellie Sullenberger. The 17-year-old has grown attached to the therapy dogs during her

One of the therapy dogs with Paws & Think peers from a window during a car parade around the Ascension St. Vincent campus in Indianapolis in mid-May. The nonprofit has 24 therapy teams with a dog and their human who visit Ascension sites in and around the city. During most of the pandemic, their visits were outside or virtual.

Ellie Sullenberger, 17, cradles a miniature Paws & Think therapist. She’s grown close to the therapy dogs during her treatment for a brain tumor.

yearslong treatment for a brain tumor.

“Ellie is one of the dogs’ biggest fans,” Burton says. “She knows almost all of them by name.”

Knapp says that when the canine therapy teams returned to hospitals to greet staff, their first scheduled stops were with the clinicians and other staffers who have been on the front lines of COVID care.

“We wanted to make sure that we were providing pet therapy to those associates who really went through it at the peak of COVID,” she says.

Burton says hospital staffers cheered as the dogs returned. “One staff member said the thing they have missed most during COVID was the therapy dogs,” she says. “It really just sort of solidified for us that what we’re doing means a lot, not just to the patients, but that the staff need it just as much if not more sometimes.”

— LISA EISENHAUER

June 1, 2021 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

Pandemic mental health

ter. She says that while virtually everyone was negatively impacted by the pandemic in some way, people of color were particularly exposed. Blacks were almost two times as likely as whites to die of COVID. And Black people were disproportionately affected by job loss in the pandemic. If job loss spurred mental distress, Black people were the least likely to trust the health system’s mental health services. The insidious stress of structural racism added to their suffering, she says.

From page 1

From bad to worse For several years before the pandemic, the Trust for America’s Health and Providence’s Well Being Trust issued “Pain in the Nation” reports, documenting the escalating rates of deaths of despair, or deaths from alcohol, suicide, synthetic opioids, and psychostimulants.

Spieth says the Cleveland area went into the pandemic with high levels of opioid and crack use, high suicide rates and high rates of homelessness, and things have gotten worse since. Homelessness can be both the result and the cause of mental health distress.

Joan Tompkins, manTompkins ager of behavioral health operations for the Oregon region of PeaceHealth, adds that even prior to the pandemic, providers had been seeing increasing rates of high-acuity mental health conditions necessitating higher levels of care, such as inpatient psychiatric care.

She notes that escalation of mental health

Russell Spieth, director of substance abuse treatment outpatient services at Rosary Hall, discusses a client with Melinda Davis, a peer recovery support specialist. Spieth says there’s been an escalation of behavioral health needs amid the pandemic. Rosary Hall is part of St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland.

distress is taking place amid a nationwide shortage of mental health professionals.

When the pandemic shutdowns took effect, people with mental health challenges suddenly lost some of the supports they had relied on, which often exacerbated their symptoms, says Michelle Schafer, regional vice president of behavioral health for St. Schafer Louis-based SSM Health.

Many mental health clinics temporarily shut down until they acquired personal protective gear for staff and put protocols in place to safely deliver care.

There was a slight lag before providers were equipped to offer counseling and psychiatric services over telehealth connections. And, says Schafer, when it came to in-person care, “in the beginning people were afraid to access services. They put mental health care and regular health care off because they did not want to go out and risk getting COVID.” Many support group meetings moved online, but Spieth says the temporary halt of in-person peer gatherings and one-onones with sobriety sponsors at first caught vulnerable people off-guard and dealt a heavy blow to the sobriety community.

Socioeconomic stressors As infection controls locked down schools, churches, businesses and numerous other institutions, the financial and social repercussions on mental health care became widespread. With jobs

Biden administration to allocate funding to address mental health crisis T

hrough the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Biden administration will provide nearly $2.5 billion in funding to address what it says is a national crisis in mental illness and addiction. In announcing the funding, the substance abuse and mental health arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that mental distress and substance abuse have worsened during the pandemic.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will direct $1.65 billion of the funds to a Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant that allows states and territories to plan, implement and evaluate programming to prevent and treat substance abuse. And $825 million will be allocated through a Community Mental Health Services Block Grant, which allows states and territories to provide comprehensive community mental health services and address needs and gaps in treatment services for people with severe mental health conditions. This grant funding announced in March was appropriated under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The administration’s release on the funding said isolation, sickness, grief, job loss, food instability and loss of routines have devastated many Americans and have led to increased behavioral health issues.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration previously had given $686 million in Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic expansion grants and emergency grants to address mental and substance use disorders during the pandemic. Among the recipients are state health department health service agencies, medical clinics, mental health service providers and substance abuse treatment providers.

— JULIE MINDA

Karen Elshout/© CHA

He and others providing mental health and substance dependence treatment at ministry facilities say their organizations have been continuously adapting to the changing dynamics of the pandemic to respond to the escalating demand for behavioral health services. They began or significantly expanded telehealth services and reopened in-person behavioral health services when it was safe to do so.

They expanded partnerships with community organizations to do outreach, so that low-income people knew where and how to access behavioral health services.

But more work remains.

Spieth says, “The risk is that we have an even larger proportion of the population struggling with untreated mental health and substance abuse conditions that affect their well-being. Research shows that if we don’t adequately address these, we’ll have even worse outcomes down the line, including more people incarcerated, more homelessness, more violence, more suicide.”

“If we don’t address mental health concerns Gerber early on, they don’t just go away, they just become bigger crises later,” agrees Carla Gerber, clinical manager of behavioral health services for PeaceHealth’s Oregon Network.

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A woman has her temperature taken at SSM Health DePaul Hospital – St. Louis’ Behavioral Health Urgent Care clinic in May.

eliminated or hours cut back, there was increased financial stress particularly among hourly workers.

PeaceHealth’s Tompkins notes that late summer and early fall wildfires in and around Southern Oregon and in the Willamette Valley south of Portland compounded community members’ pandemic-related stress and anxiety. Tens of thousands of people had to evacuate their homes. Thousands of residences burned.

All across the country, people experienced the pain of isolation and loss, with elders especially affected.

Dr. Arpan Waghray, Waghray chief medical officer of Providence St. Joseph Health Behavioral Medicine, says children separated from peers when schools went virtual struggled because of the lack of socialization. He says there has been a significant increase in antidepressants being prescribed to youth during the pandemic.

Domestic and partner violence grew during the pandemic as victims of all ages were forced to be sequestered with their abusers, unable to privately and safely reach out for the help of a teacher or agencies in the community.

Tompkins notes the nation’s most vulnerable who are most at risk of mental health distress include unhoused people.

Though shelters quickly came up with strategies to Bush reduce their capacity while maintaining people’s housing — such as by relocating some shelter residents to hotels — many shelters in communities with high rates of homelessness still struggled to meet the high level of need as they cut capacity to adhere to COVID prevention protocols. This worsened mental distress for many homeless people.

Megan Bush is director of intake and access for the behavioral health practice area of St. Vincent Charity Medical Cen-

A sea of anxiety and depression Michael Biscaro, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center chief of behavioral health, says pandemicrelated stress exacerbated existing mental health issues for some. AccordBiscaro ing to a Washington Post analysis of Census Bureau data, “about one-third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression” amid the pandemic.

Although ministry providers have seen an uptick in demand for mental health services, those interviewed for this article suspect many people in their service areas have not sought maintenance treatment for their serious, chronic mental health conditions because of pandemic-related barriers to care. As a result, Biscaro says, at St. Vincent, some patients are coming in with more acute symptoms of serious mental illness and are requiring more time in the hospital to stabilize their illnesses.

Biscaro gave the example of a middleaged patient with bipolar disorder who came to St. Vincent in a manic state. In the past, she had been agreeable to taking medications and usually stabilized quickly. But, she had not been to her mental health provider in nearly a year, and it required “legal intervention and a lot of work to administer appropriate treatment,” he says.

Reducing stigma Despite the imposing challenges, these providers say the pandemic has helped more people to understand the importance of mental wellness and the need to tend to it.

PeaceHealth’s Tompkins notes, “Throughout the pandemic there has been a real cultural shift when it comes to discussions about mental health. People have normalized talking about their mental health struggles, and this is really a good thing.” She hopes this will help to reduce mental health stigma, so that more people will come to believe that it is not just acceptable but responsible to seek mental health care.

Spieth suspects all mental health providers will be seeing waves of new patients coming in for treatment for the foreseeable future. But Biscaro says since the average delay between onset of mental illness symptoms and treatment is five to 10 years, depending on the diagnosis, mental health providers could be seeing the residual effects of the pandemic among incoming patients for quite some time.

Schafer notes people who cultivate resiliency adapt and recover better in times of emotional hardship. “If you don’t have resiliency, you can be lost in the stress, not see your way out, turn to drugs, alcohol or other unhealthy ways to cope.”

Resiliency can be developed by connecting with others, making healthy choices and being focused on solutions rather than victimhood, she says.

Waghray says throughout the pandemic he witnessed people stepping out of their comfort zones to help one another, to build one another up. He says he expects there will be “post-traumatic growth” in the American psyche.

“My hope is that we will not just bounce back, but that we will bounce forward” to a place of better mental health, he says. jminda@chausa.org

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CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD June 1, 2021

CONNECT Be inspired by engaging speakers and innovative peers as they share lived experiences and help guide us toward a deeper understanding of our collective efforts to address health disparities and promote

Join us for Assembly 2021 – a virtual two-day event within a highly interactive environment where you will make meaningful connections with respected colleagues, thought leaders and friends.

ENGAGE

racial and social justice.

Former President of Ireland & humanitarian Mary Robinson on climate justice

Health policy expert & renowned scholar Daniel Dawes on health equity

Poverty & social justice expert Dr. Gloria Wilder on women’s health disparities

Human rights activist & Just Mercy author Bryan Stevenson on racial justice

Juju Chang Emmy Award-Winning Co-Anchor of ABC News’ Nightline

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith Chair, U.S. COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force; Associate Dean and Director, Yale School of Medicine

Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM CHA President & CEO

Julie Manas CHA Chairperson and President, Ascension St. Vincent North Region

Dr. Rhonda Medows CHA Chairpersonelect and President, Population Health Management, Providence St. Joseph Health

June 1, 2021 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

CELEBRATE Be on hand for heartwarming celebrations that spotlight our remarkable award winners and the amazing work happening across our ministry!

2021 Recipients SISTER CAROL KEEHAN AWARD

For boldly championing society’s most vulnerable

Samuel L. Ross, MD, former Chief Community Health Officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Cincinnati

SISTER CONCILIA MORAN AWARD For demonstrated creativity and breakthrough thinking

John M. Starcher Jr., Esq., Chief Executive Officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Cincinnati

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD For a lifetime of contributions

Sr. Doris Gottemoeller, RSM, Chair, Bon Secours Mercy Ministries; Board Member, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Cincinnati

TOMORROW’S LEADERS HONOREES

Honoring young people who will guide our ministry in the future

Andrew Arai, Executive Director, Mission, Innovation and Assessment, Providence St. Joseph Health, Renton, Washington Doug Baxter-Jenkins, Community Integration Program Manager, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, Tacoma, Washington Catherine Kroll, Director of Infection Prevention, PeaceHealth, Vancouver, Washington

Rainy Tieman, Clinical Nurse Manager of Labor/Delivery and OB Emergency Department, St. Mary’s Medical Center, Grand Junction, Colorado Kimberly King Webb, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, CHRISTUS Health, Irving, Texas Baligh Yehia, MD, MPP, MSc, Senior Vice President, Ascension and President, Ascension Medical Group, St. Louis

2020 Recipients

Karthik Iyer, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Mercy Hospital Jefferson, Crystal City, Missouri Prub Khurana, Chief Strategy Officer, Providence St. Joseph Health, Irvine, California Tiffany Parker, Director, Inpatient Behavioral Health, Addiction Services and Domestic Violence Services, St. Agnes Hospital, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Aaron Puchbauer, President and Chief Executive Officer, HSHS Good Shepherd Hospital, Shelbyville, Illinois

Nathaniel Schlicher, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP, Regional Medical Director For boldly championing society’s most vulnerable of Quality Assurance for Emergency Jane Graf, former President and Chief Medicine, CHI Franciscan Health, Tacoma, Executive Officer, Mercy Housing Inc., Denver Washington

SISTER CAROL KEEHAN AWARD

SISTER CONCILIA MORAN AWARD For demonstrated creativity and breakthrough thinking

Patricia Casey, Program Coordinator, Special Needs Tracking and Awareness Response System (STARS), SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, St. Louis

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Bernardita Ureta, Vice President, Mission, Red de Salud UC, CHRISTUS Health, Santiago, Chile

ACHIEVEMENT CITATION

For innovative programming that changes lives

2020 Recipient Alaska CARES (Child Abuse Response & Evaluation Services), Providence Health & Services, Alaska Region

For a lifetime of contributions

Johnny Cox, RN, Ph.D., Former Sponsor, Providence St. Joseph Health, Renton, Washington, and Chief Ethics Advisor, Alliance of Catholic Health Care, Sacramento, California

And who will win this year’s Achievement Citation?

Be on hand for Assembly 2021 to find out!

TOMORROW’S LEADERS HONOREES Trent Pepper, Senior Vice President/ General Counsel, Benedictine, Minneapolis Honoring young people who will guide our Kyle Prochaska, Regional Director, Planning, Design and Construction, SSM Health, Madison, Wisconsin Megan L. Roberts, MHA, Director, Orthopedic Services, CHI St. Vincent, Little Rock, Arkansas Michael Talley, RRT, MHA, Vice President, Clinical Improvement and Virtual Care, CHRISTUS Health, Irving, Texas Wes Tidwell, Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, Ascension Seton Williamson, Round Rock, Texas

ministry in the future

Natalie Blum, System Director for Quality and Infection Prevention, PeaceHealth, Vancouver, Washington Lindsay Flannery, Vice President, Patient Care Services, Avera Sacred Heart Hospital, Yankton, South Dakota Wendy Gaudet, Vice President, Operations, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Morgan Griffith, Vice President, Digital Strategy and Transformation, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Cincinnati

REGISTERREGISTER NOW! NOW!  chausa.org/assembly

chausa.org/assembly

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CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD June 1, 2021

Remote work From page 1

Greg Till, executive vice president and chief people officer for Providence St. Joseph Health, says his system sent home about 20,000 workers for their own safety as well as the safety of its clinical caregivers when the pandemic started last year.

Since then, he and others in Till the system have been developing a new working model with supporting resources and policies for employees working remotely.

“We’ve put together, I think, a pretty forward-leaning vision for where and how we want folks to work in the future in a postCOVID world, prioritizing safety, flexibility, collaboration and engagement,” Till says.

Under that vision, he says most administrative workers will continue to work in their virtual offices two to four days a week. The other days, they will be in hub locations for work that involves collaboration, community building, and sacred encounters that can’t be successfully done virtually. Those sites will have collaborative work spaces as well as drop-in desks with Internet access and computer docks for focused work — configurations similar to those found in business centers in many hotels. Most workers will not have designated offices.

Surveys, pilot programs Natasha McGraw, vice president of human resources strategic solutions for Bon Secours Mercy Health, says her system has about 6,000 associates who are working remotely. She expects a permanent plan for those workMcGraw ers to be announced before the end of the summer.

In recent months, the system has been surveying staffers and managers and testing pilot programs for remote and hybrid work models. McGraw says early evidence has dispelled concern that off-site workers wouldn’t get as much done as those working from a system office.

“I think going into this people were questioning whether or not we would be as productive and I think now we’ve proven that we can be as productive or more productive,” she says.

Meanwhile, she adds, work satisfaction among staffers who are remote is “through the roof.” A survey found that 84% would like to stay remote and the other 16% would like a hybrid work setup where they are on-site when in-person collaboration is

Administrative caregivers working remotely for Providence St. Joseph Health look jolly for a Zoom gathering during the holidays. The system sent 20,000 nonclinical workers home at the start of the pandemic.

Most of them will continue working mainly remotely on a permanent basis.

needed. Like the other health systems, Bon Secours Mercy Health is looking at how it could reconfigure its administrative work spaces to provide collaborative work areas rather than private offices.

Finding work-life balance One of the Bon Secours Mercy Health workers sent home in mid-March 2020 is Joe Filigno, system director for workforce insight and activation. Filigno says that the first months of the transition were challenging to navigate, as he and his wife figured out how to turn their home into a coworking space and help their son attend virtual kindergarten.

He has since come to see the opportunity to work from home as a gift. He has figured out ways to weave family and personal time into his workday. This year, his son is attending a “school pod” with a few other students at the home of a teacher. “When my son gets home, I can run upstairs and get him a snack and say hello to him, and that’s amazing,” he says. “It’s just such a blessing to have that.”

Filigno says even though he is putting in more work hours in his remote office than he did at his office in central Cincinnati where he was physically proximate to more than 1,000 colleagues, the flexibility he has been able to build into his work hours makes his job even more enjoyable.

He also says he and his team of about 15 have been more productive working collaboratively from their home offices than they were in the central office. He credits this success to the use of technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams that allow them to collaborate as well as to the encouragement from upper management to find a work-life balance that supports their individual needs.

“Health care’s known for being pretty

hierarchical and fairly conservative, but we’ve embraced, in the spirit of compassion and understanding, what drives people, what truly makes people able to be their best and I’ve been truly proud to be part of that here,” Filigno says.

Unified, agile, empowered McGraw says surveys done by Bon Secours Mercy Health have shown that remote workers like “being integrated with their families and their pets.” The system’s research also has shown that managers need to help remote workers set boundaries on their work time to keep company time from creeping into personal time. One of the ways managers are doing this is by limiting work meetings to normal business hours.

The system also has done what McGraw calls benchmarking studies to see how other employers are addressing the question of remote work. It found that 80% of those that — like Bon Secours Mercy — have been rated as top places to work by business groups have a remote work strategy.

McGraw says that finding indicates that in order to keep and attract top talent, remote work will need to be an option for workers. “It is very important for us, to be able to continue to obtain the talent needed for the future, to continue some remote work strategy,” she says.

In McGraw’s view, the swiftness with which so many Bon Secours Mercy workers have been able to shift from on-site to remote work shows how agile the system’s workforce is.

“Unified, agile and empowered are our main three associate behaviors that we have and expect in our culture and this is definitely being agile,” she says. “There is nothing like overnight having to go home and begin working remotely and pivoting everything.”

Upcoming Events from The Catholic Health Association Webinar: Advanced Issues in Sponsorship – Session Four: Recruitment and Selection of Sponsors

We Are Called – Confronting Racism to Achieve Health Equity Conversation Series III

Webinar: Advanced Issues in Sponsorship – Session Five: Initial and Ongoing Formation of Sponsors

2021 Virtual Assembly ‘All God’s Children’

Human Trafficking Networking Zoom Call

Webinar: Advanced Issues in Sponsorship – Session Six: Ministry Identity and Sponsor Assessment

June 9 | 2 - 3:30 p.m. ET

June 14 – 15

June 30 | Noon – 12:30 p.m. ET

July 13 | Noon ET

July 14 | 2 - 3:30 p.m. ET

Aug. 11 | 2 - 3:30 p.m. ET

A Passionate Voice for Compassionate Care®

chausa.org/calendar

From temporary to permanent Angela Nguyen, vice president of talent acquisition and colleague relations for Hospital Sisters Health System, says her system initially sent about 1,600 nonclinical workers home during the pandemic. With safety measures and protocols in place, about 900 have been required or wanted to return and the 700 others continue to work remotely by choice.

A HSHS workgroup is Nguyen developing permanent policies and processes for remote workers, Nguyen says. That workgroup includes executives, managers and representatives from the system’s facilities team.

While the policies are still taking shape, Nguyen expects remote work to become a permanent option for many staffers. “For the majority, it’s worked very well,” she says.

“We’ve seen productivity stay the same and meet standards and in a lot of cases improve.”

Like Bon Secours Mercy and Providence, HSHS discussions about remote work policies include the possibility of retooling office spaces so that they mainly provide collaborative work areas and unassigned workstations with Internet access.

Till says that for Providence, having most administrative caregivers — the term the system uses for staff members who don’t treat patients or work directly with patients — working off-site might bring some longterm cost savings by allowing it to shrink its office space. But he says that hasn’t been a primary consideration in its remote work planning. The goal is to create a future where caregivers can do their best work across virtual and office locations.

Home ergonomics The system is making investments to make virtual work more functional and comfortable and to make remaining office space more conducive to collaborative work, Till says. Any staffer who works remotely 50% or more of the time is getting a technology stipend that covers wireless Internet access and a technology package that includes a laptop computer, dual monitors, and other equipment to enable a supportive and productive virtual office setup.

The system also is encouraging remote workers to do ergonomic assessments of their work areas to ensure that their home office setups promote health and safety. It is providing office equipment such as desks and chairs if workers need them.

“We’ve also provided a ton of research and training on how to be a good virtual manager, how to collaborate when you’re not in person, and other resources and support for maximizing our caregivers’ effectiveness at home — not just their productivity and work output but also their mental health and the wellness that we need to support,” Till says.

Wider candidate pool A benefit the system didn’t anticipate but that remote workers have reported is avoiding daily commutes. “It’s less wear and tear on our commuters,” Till says. “Providence is primarily in major metropolitan hubs like Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles. It takes some of our caregivers an hour to get to work and so this is also adding some additional time for them for work-life balance.”

Additionally, the virtual work strategy supports Providence’s commitment to be carbon negative by 2030.

Managers at all three systems see a wider candidate pool for job openings as a lasting benefit of expanded remote work options.

Nguyen says HSHS potentially will be able to recruit workers from across the country and not require them to relocate.

“I think it really broadens our candidate pool and it increases our ability to outreach to a more diverse candidate population, which is really exciting for us,” she says. leisenhauer@chausa.org

June 1, 2021 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

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Issues raised in ‘Toxic’ movie parallel experiences of CHRISTUS executive The grim experiences depicted in the movie Toxic: A Black Woman’s Story hit close to home for Kimberly King Webb, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for CHRISTUS Health.

Webb was part of a three-person panel who Webb led a discussion of the 26-minute film after it was shown by CHA during a webinar on April 30. The movie focuses on a day in the life of a Black professional named Nina as she navigates various stressors and their effects on her pregnancy and her family. It was produced by First Year Cleveland, a community group affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine that is dedicated to reversing the high infant death rate in the city and surrounding county.

Nina’s character is, like Webb, an attorney with a supportive family who is part of a high socioeconomic bracket. Nevertheless, she is not shielded from dismissive health care providers or race-related realities, such as the fear that being pulled over by police will escalate beyond a traffic stop, unequal treatment of her son because he wears dreadlocks and the stereotyping of people of color as dependent on public assistance.

After the film’s screening, Webb dis-

Photo courtesy of “TOXIC: A Black Woman's Story”

By LISA EISENHAUER

Crystle Paynther, who plays Nina, weeps in a scene from the short film Toxic: A Black Woman’s Story. The movie explores the intersection of racism, toxic stress and birth outcomes. It was screened during a CHA webinar in April.

cussed her experiences before and after she gave birth to her first child last year. She shared how during a childbirth class the instructor asked all 11 participants what their fears were. The other 10 women said they worried about how painful the process was going to be. “I, being the only African American woman in the room, said, ‘I’m afraid of dying’ and you could probably hear a pin drop,” she recalled.

“I know and I knew then that African American mothers are three to four times more likely to die in pregnancy of childbirth-related causes and that Black babies die during the first year of life at twice the rate of white babies.”

Delivery, then misery Webb gave birth to a healthy baby boy in spring 2020, but days later she was enduring a lot of pain. She called her doctor’s office and spoke to a nurse coordinator there several times who told her to “bear with it” because pain was normal in the aftermath of childbirth.

When the pain didn’t ease, she went to an emergency room and was admitted to the hospital with postpartum preeclampsia. “The ER doctor said, ‘If you’d waited another day this would have been a much different outcome,’” Webb said.

Webb’s experiences were at a hospital that is not part of the CHRISTUS system.

She lives in Dallas, where there are no CHRISTUS facilities nearby. But she noted by email after the webinar that what happened to her could have happened anywhere and that her experiences offer an example of the importance of care providers working toward health equity.

Getting extended care Kathy Curran, senior director of public policy for CHA, and Dennis Gonzales, senior director of mission innovation and integration for CHA, joined Webb on the panel.

Curran said that while studies show that Black Curran women face worse pregnancy outcomes than whites regardless of their socioeconomic status, lower-income women in general face greater challenges in getting quality medical care. She noted Gonzales that the most recent economic stimulus package passed by Congress has a provision that allows states to extend Medicaid coverage to mothers up to a year postpartum. She encouraged health care providers to urge their states to take advantage of that program.

“It’s really moving and important for us to understand that this just doesn’t happen in movies or in the newspaper,” Curran said of the challenges that expectant and new mothers face. “This is affecting the lives of people we live with, we work with and we know in the ministry.”

Equity campaign Gonzales described the ministry’s We Are Called initiative. The campaign, led by CHA and supported by its member Catholic health systems, has a goal of ending health disparities and systemic racism.

Twenty-three of the nation’s largest Catholic health care systems already have committed to the Comforting Racism by Achieving Health Equity pledge that is part of the initiative. Gonzales noted that Webb’s system, CHRISTUS, was the first to sign the campaign’s pledge.

The four-part pledge calls for working for COVID-19 health equity, examining all aspects of CHA member organizations, building right and just relationships with communities, and advocating for polices to end health disparities and systemic racism.

Webb said she was proud to see her system commit to the pledge. “It’s about how do we create an environment that’s more inclusive and understanding,” she said. “I think that’s one of the key things that we can do.”

A link to a recording of the panel discussion of “Toxic” is available to CHA members at chausa.org/cha-we-are-called/ resources. leisenhauer@chausa.org

KEEPING UP

Ip

Sr. Stelman

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES Dr. Ivan Ip to chief medical information officer of Covenant Health of Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

Sr. Joan Marie Stelman, OSB, to senior vice president for mission integration of Benedictine of Duluth, Minnesota, effective June 7.

8

CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD June 1, 2021

Global aid in pandemic hospital beds and, in some cases, clinicians. People fleeing urban centers spread infection into rural areas ill-equipped to feed, house or provide medical care to the pandemic migrants.

“The types of outbreaks happening in low-resource countries like India today will continue to be repeated in the future” as long as there is inequity in the distribution of scarce health care resources, Georgia Winson told Catholic Health World. She is president and executive director for the Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach medical surplus recovery organization. “Those of us in countries with resources need to help meet the needs of countries without resources.”

Catholic health systems in the U.S. and their international aid divisions are scrambling this spring to determine how best to aid providers and vulnerable people in the hotspot countries. They are providing funding, equipment, supplies and other aid, primarily working through international aid organizations and/or in-country contacts.

Cash preferred Most U.S. Catholic health systems were active in international aid well before the

Florence Ogola/Catholic Relief Services

From page 1

Contributions from the Catholic health ministry helped support Catholic Relief Services donations of handwashing stations and personal protective equipment in Kenya as well as sanitation training for health care workers.

pandemic, coordinating medical volunteerism, donations of supplies, financial contributions and other support. Many systems have historical international ties that have to do with the global presence of their founding congregations. Throughout the pandemic, these health systems have identified the pressing needs of foreign nations through their in-country contacts

Catholic organizations urge vaccine equity D

irectors of global aid participating in a CHA-hosted Global Health Networking videoconference agreed that inequitable worldwide distribution of lifesaving COVID19 vaccines and other critical supplies is a moral and medical issue that demands the attention of all countries and providers that have an abundance of resources.

Jennifer Poidatz, Catholic Relief Services’ vice president for humanitarian response, said in the May 5 meeting that CRS is in communication with the U.S. government, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies to determine how best to ensure vaccine reaches poor countries and that the most vulnerable people get access to the drugs.

Another presenter, Fr. Mathew Abraham, the immediate past director-general of the Catholic Health Association of India, said vaccine shortages are widespread in that country and there was no sign that would abate in the near future.

There are severe vaccine shortages in poor countries around the world. The New York Times maintains a worldwide COVID tracking website that is updated daily and that is based on data supplied by governments and compiled by the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. According to reports on that site dated in mid-May, “More than 1.32 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 17 doses for every 100 people. Only 0.3% of doses have been administered in lowincome countries.”

Ali Santore, Providence St. Joseph Health executive vice president and chief advocacy officer, told Catholic Health World in May that Providence may partner with the American Hospital Association and others in efforts to relieve vaccine shortages in other countries.

Santore said Providence supports the efforts by the Biden administration to address inequity in vaccine distribution, including potentially waiving some of the intellectual property rights of vaccine trademark holders to increase vaccine supply in low-resource countries. The Biden administration says it will ship 20 million doses overseas this month with another 60 million pledged to aid other countries.

Providence is among ministry systems that are supporting migrant inclusion in COVID-19 vaccine access in Europe and the U.K. advanced by the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility. Anticipating inequity even before the vaccines had been developed, the coalition of faith- and values-based investors wrote to the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies in February 2020 warning of a potential “vaccine apartheid” if low- and middle-income countries were not prioritized in vaccine distribution.

— JULIE MINDA

A parish volunteer in Esquipulas, Guatemala, helps deliver food funded in part by Global Health Ministry for distribution to families in remote villages.

That organization paid for the food using funds given by Catholic health ministry volunteers, as well as a bequest from a benefactor.

and responded with various types of aid.

They upped those efforts significantly with COVID’s spring onslaught.

Trinity Health’s Global Health Ministry has been working with local partners to build a much-needed oxygen plant and to funnel food and medications to people in need in Chulucanas, Peru.

The aid organization also is working with Trinity Health’s supply chain to provide personal protective equipment in Peru, and with Trinity Health’s information services division and a Trinity Health family practice in Delaware to provide telehealth services in Peru.

In-country contacts Bon Secours Mercy Health long has had a presence in Peru through Bon Secours Sisters who serve there. Camille Grippon, Bon Secours Mercy director of global health, said the sisters have been reporting

A Benedictine monastery truck delivers food packed by parish volunteers in Esquipulas, Guatemala. The supplies were funded in part by support from Global Health Ministry.

a failed health care system and desperate conditions, including oxygen shortages so bad that families are paying 1,000% markup for oxygen on the black market.

Since the pandemic’s start, Bon Secours Mercy has provided relief totaling more than $500,000 in Peru, Haiti and South Sudan. The funds have gone for oxygen, health care capacity building, personal protective equipment, handwashing stations, food and medicine. The funding in Haiti and South Sudan has been for preparedness, in case of a surge.

India outpost Providence St. Joseph Health is connected to India through a Providence Global Center it opened last year in Hyderabad. The center employs 300 and provides information technology back-office support such as cybersecurity and data analytics services to Providence. Providence also is connected to St. Joseph Hospital in Nagpur, which is run by the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Ali Santore, executive vice president and chief advocacy officer of Providence, said many of the system’s U.S.-based employees with family ties to India are donating to relief efforts through a platform Providence set up for that purpose.

During the recent outbreaks, the system gave $150,000, including $50,000 in employee donation matching funds, to purchase oxygen concentrators, ventilators and other supplies in Hyderabad and Nagpur as well as materials to set up isolation units in Hyderabad.

Power of partnership Many ministry systems are contributing to Catholic Relief Services, which is raising money to provide medical supplies distributed through the Catholic Health Association of India. That organization’s members operate more than 3,000 health care facilities.

Ascension’s Resource Group and Ascension Global Mission are partnering with medical surplus recovery organizations to transport products and equipment, including N95 masks, procedure masks, gloves and other in-demand items, to India.

Ascension Global Mission also is providing financial assistance through trusted partners in other affected countries, as well, according to Susan Huber, president for Ascension Global Mission.

Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach is a nonprofit medical surplus recovery organization that receives ongoing supply donations from numerous hospitals — including those within Hospital Sisters Health System, and some operated by Ascension, Mercy, SCL Health and SSM Health. Its supporters have increased their supply donations to aid countries struggling under COVID outbreaks, and they and other donors have provided funding for purchasing additional goods in-country. Winson said trade routes have been disrupted amid the pandemic and shipping costs have skyrocketed.

CommonSpirit Health is donating more than 630,000 surplus pieces of personal protective equipment to health care workers in India, including masks, gowns, goggles, coveralls, face shields and N95 face masks through a partnership with Air India and Rotary International.

Through a local partner — the Emmanuel Hospital Association charity care network in India — CommonSpirit is providing tailored reflections, self-assessments and other wellness tools for India’s overwhelmed health care workers. It offers live online support sessions for staff of Emmanuel Hospital Association facilities as well as coaching for those facilities’ leadership.

“Globally, this crisis is far from over, and the current situation in India is dire.

We have a moral responsibility to support others as they manage the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” CommonSpirit Chief Executive Lloyd Dean said in a statement on the donations. jminda@chausa.org