28 RESILIENT NH
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RESILIENT NH
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NHBR.COM
Gathering strength through adversity D-H CEO Joanne Conroy on the management and personal lessons she learned during the pandemic
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B Y AM A N D A A N D R E W S
THE FIRST CASE OF COVID-19 in New England was discovered in an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon — on Joanne Conroy’s watch. The employee had just returned home to New Hampshire from a trip to Italy, and brought a hazardous souvenir back with him. While the transmission to others was low — there were only three confirmed cases from his interactions while infected — it was the starting point of a system overhaul that would carry the hospital through the pandemic. “We stood up Incident Command the next week. Incident Command at hospitals like ours is a group of 15 to 20 people that are chosen because of their level of expertise, but there are no senior leaders there,” said Conroy, CEO and president of DartmouthHitchcock. “Our role is to not get involved; just step away and let them do their work. They met two to three times a day solving problems: standing up a lab, looking at our supply chain, how many masks we had, how prepared were we?” Like most everywhere else, a lot had to change structurally and logistically. When businesses started to shut down, Conroy stepped in. At the time, she spoke with Dan Jantzen, D-H’s chief financial officer. “I said, ‘Dan, this is a big deal. Not just from an operational perspective, but I don’t know how long we can survive financially by shutting everything down.’ So, we went in and met with the team.” After considering their options, Conroy made the decision to shut down 75 percent of the organization’s operations. “We didn’t lay anybody off. We didn’t furlough anybody. We were going to need everybody,” she said, adding that she told employees, “We don’t know in what role, but we’re going to need you. So don’t worry about your job. Just worry about taking care of patients.” TRANSPARENCY, COMMUNICATION
Joanne Conroy led Dartmouth-Hitchcock staff through the pandemic without layoffs. (Photo by Allegra Boverman)
As if leading a large healthcare organization during a pandemic wasn’t stressful enough, Conroy’s husband Douglas died shortly after its start and, only two weeks later, her mother suffered a debilitating stroke. “I had to bring her up here from South Carolina and renovate the first floor (of my
house), so she would have a place to stay,” Conroy said. “My life has changed considerably. I’ve got mom duty before and after work — a live-in caregiver. I feel so fortunate that I can do that. I appreciate there are some people who can’t do that.” Instead of keeping personal matters secret, Conroy chose to inform her team about them. “It’s important to share that with the employees, so that they know that we’re all dealing with the pandemic in our separate ways,” she said. “I try to be as authentic as possible, even pre-Covid. But I think it became even more important during Covid. When people are exhausted, they want leaders to be straight with them … They want to know that you’re in it with them.” In an effort to be as transparent as possible with her team and patients alike, Conroy created “Joanne’s Journal” online in early 2020, to show that she was working through the thick of it alongside everyone else. “I am in awe of employees that are dealing with child care, aging parents, home situations that aren’t optimal and then showing up to work every day and being 100 percent present. It’s pretty impressive. But unless you’re being authentic and sharing that, they don’t want to see you as this sort of
