Catholic health care leaders warn Medicaid cuts could be devastating
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Leaders of Catholic health care are warning that proposed cuts and changes to Medicaid could result in coverage losses to millions of people, affect the overall ecosystem of health care, and take America down a “dangerous path” of reducing access for everyone.
“Congress has a moral obligation to con-
sider the real and harmful consequences these proposals would have on our nation’s health care safety net and the impact on the lives of America’s most vulnerable individuals,” Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM, president and CEO of CHA, said in a press call on May 20. She added: “Congress should not take America down a dangerous path of drastically reducing access to health care in the United States.”
Sr. Mary was joined by executives from four Catholic health care systems that care for patients in 39 states and cover urban, rural and suburban areas. She pointed out that Catholic hospitals care for one in seven patients nationwide, many of whom rely on Medicaid.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least 7.6 million people will
Chief academic officers ensure infrastructure is in place to recruit, upskill workforce
By JULIE MINDA
Health systems and facilities are facing formidable challenges when it comes to workforce development and retention: There is a huge and ever-increasing demand nationwide for health care workers of all stripes, but there are not enough candidates in the pipeline. At the same time, the educational requirements for all health care workers are increasing and changing rapidly, so educators must be attuned to the environment and nimble enough to respond.
To take on these challenges in an intentional and coordinated way, some health systems in recent years
CommonSpirit’s St. Anne Hospital offers new mothers vital support
By JULIE MINDA
The days immediately after hospital discharge were so much worse health-wise for Ashley Kathman three years ago when she delivered her son Brooks than this past January when she delivered her daughter Camille.
Kathman had preeclampsia in both
pregnancies and related high blood pressure post-delivery. But three years ago, her high blood pressure drove her to the emergency room on multiple occasions. This year was completely different.
Kathman’s obstetrician-gynecologist
Dr. Leizl Sapico knew Kathman was at risk for high blood pressure and connected her with a program that educated her about her condition and what to do when her blood pressure spiked or plummeted. Also, this time, Kathman used a blood pressure cuff every morning and evening that transmitted her vitals to a nurse. That nurse would follow up with Kathman if the numbers were concerning. Kathman also had around-the-clock access to clinicians by
Health ministry greets Pope Leo with joy, hope
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Emerging from a period of mourning after the death of Pope Francis, members of the Catholic health care ministry offered prayers and expressions of joy and hope for Pope Leo XIV, the name chosen by Chicagoborn Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost upon his election as pope.
His first words to the world on May 8 as he emerged onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City were: “Peace be with you!”
Pope Leo, the first pontiff born in the United States, evoked the name of Pope
PeaceHealth’s Women of Peace movement seeks to support, empower women caregivers
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Who are the Women of Peace?
If you ask any staffer at PeaceHealth, you may hear about the health system’s founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Or maybe its president and CEO, Liz Dunne, who took the role in 2015. Or perhaps the women who make up nearly 80% of PeaceHealth’s workforce.
“I think that gives us a special responsibility, given our heritage, to ensure that we are doing everything that we can do within our power to make sure that the women in our organization feel empowered to be their very best selves,” said Sarah Ness, executive vice president and chief administrative officer.
Sr. Mary Slubowski Conrado Wexler Hodges
Pope Leo XIV
Dr. Catherine O’Neal, chief academic officer at Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, chats with Dr. Mark Laperouse at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. Laperouse is the hospital’s medical director for emergency services.
New Mercy hospital
The suburban St. Louis facility will be Missouri's first new acute care hospital campus in nearly a decade. Plans include 75 inpatient acute care beds and an emergency department with 26 beds.
Saint Anthony Hospital’s mental health program in Chicago opens doors for teens, children
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Before last fall, children and teenagers on Chicago’s west side who needed mental health care often had to wait months for an appointment because there were few providers available.
Since Saint Anthony Hospital launched its SPARK program, which stands for Supportive Psychiatry and Resilience for Kids, people under the age of 18 can get mental health care in a matter of days.
“Being able to shorten those wait times for those children was a crucial step that we took,” said Dr. Anoop Takher, medical director of child psychiatry at Saint Anthony and of the SPARK program.
He said over the last several months, more and more patients have come in for speech therapy, occupational therapy, social worker services, psychiatric assessments and medication management.
“It’s been a true blessing,” he said.
‘More touchpoints’
The SPARK program operates from Saint Anthony’s Archer Clinic, which houses primary care, family medicine and other services. Patients who visit the clinic can easily be referred to a SPARK therapist. SPARK offers in-person and virtual appointments and accepts Medicaid. Sixty percent of Saint Anthony’s patient base relies on Medicaid.
“Being able to have myself and the other providers under the same roof with a therapist just makes things so much easier,” Takher said. “If a patient is connecting with a therapist on a weekly basis, they have many more touchpoints with them. And for us as providers ... we’re able to then gather that information from the therapist and have a true, clear picture of what a patient is struggling with, rather than what we can see within 30 minutes or 60 minutes. Being able to have that collaboration and interdisciplinary approach to treating patients gives
Nursing Initiative grants
Two CHA members are among 13 hospitals that will share in $51 million in grants from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation of New York City to develop their nursing workforces.
$10 million gift Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in California plans to complete construction of a family care center and build a new women’s health center with the record donation.
them a higher level of care.”
The providers and staff are working together toward the same mission of helping others, he said. “It’s such a team-based approach that it just makes it a fun environment to work in,” he said.
Diverse families and issues
The neighborhood Saint Anthony serves is diverse and has a large Hispanic population. The SPARK program’s therapist speaks Spanish as does its physician assistant.
Takher said young patients come in with many conditions, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Some children and families are anxious because of immigration issues, and through the SPARK program, Saint Anthony staff is able to connect with families to discuss that stress, Takher said. “It’s allowed us to help us understand what they are going through as a family and how those worries are realistic, or if they are age-appropriate,” he said. “And it allows us to treat them as a family, as a whole.”
Every patient has a different measure of success, he said. For a psychotic patient, success might be staying out of the hospital for months and for a depressed or anxious patient it might be improvement in daily living and performance in school.
“That bar is a little bit different for every patient, but being able to provide that individualistic approach, set those goals with the patient and provide that care and help them achieve those goals is the mission,” he said.
To get the word out about SPARK, staff-
ers have attended resource fairs at schools and recently partnered with the nearby nonprofit Carole Robertson Center for Learning. Instructors from Carole Robertson contact parents of students who they believe need mental health support and refer them to SPARK. Representatives from SPARK and Carole Robertson then come up with an action plan.
In a video about the partnership for the CHA series “This is Catholic Health Care,” David Walker, senior director of mental health at the learning center, said children his organization serves had been waiting six to eight months to get services critical to preparing them for school. Among the assistance he said the children need is help in learning to regulate emotions, problem solve and deal with frustrations.
“So to be able to go to a program like SPARK that does not have a waiting list, that accepts Medicaid, that removes barriers for children has been vital for the success of those children and thinking about their kindergarten readiness,” Walker said.
Takher said families are also spreading the word about SPARK.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth over the last few months, and I would hope to continue to see that over the next couple months,” he said. “Being able to put this SPARK clinic through Saint Anthony, in this community, and see the impact it’s creating and see the positive response from the families has just been great. And I hope we can continue to make that impact.”
vhahn@chausa.org
Healing Heroes program invites patients to honor Holy Cross caregivers
Holy Cross Health has introduced a program called Healing Heroes that gives patients the opportunity to honor a health care worker and make a donation to the hospital, too.
“With a philanthropic gift, they not only honor exceptional service but also help advance Holy Cross Health’s mission of compassionate, patient-centered care,” a press release about the program notes.
Holy Cross Health is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is a member of Trinity
Health.
The Healing Heroes program had received more than 40 tribute gifts as of late April. Honorees get a special pin and a personal thank you note.
“The Healing Heroes program is a reflection of what makes Holy Cross so special, the bond between caregivers and those they serve,” Laura Denoux, vice president and chief development officer at Holy Cross Health, said in a statement. “Some of the most powerful moments in health care
happen quietly, at the bedside or during a simple conversation. The Healing Heroes program shines a light on those moments and gives patients a way to turn their appreciation into something enduring.”
Donors may contribute any amount and direct their funds to an area of the hospital that means the most to them. This includes cancer, heart and vascular, orthopedics, neurosciences, Institute for Nursing Excellence, medical equipment, and technology.
Address all subscription orders, inquiries, address changes, etc., to CHA Service Center, 4455 Woodson Road, St. Louis, MO 63134-3797; phone: 800-230-7823; email: servicecenter@ chausa.org. Periodicals postage rate is paid at St. Louis and additional mailing offices. Annual subscription rates: CHA members free, others $29 and foreign $29.
Opinions, quotes and views appearing in Catholic Health World do not necessarily reflect those of CHA and do not represent an endorsement by CHA. Acceptance of advertising for publication does not constitute approval or endorsement by the publication or CHA. All advertising is subject to review before acceptance.
Vice President Communications and Marketing Brian P. Reardon
Editor Lisa Eisenhauer leisenhauer@chausa.org 314-253-3437
Dr. Anoop Takher said that since Saint Anthony Hospital launched its new SPARK program last fall, people under the age of 18 can get mental health care in a matter of days.
CHA is developing new sponsorship resources to support health ministry
By JULIE MINDA
Since last fall, CHA has been intensifying its efforts to learn from ministry leaders how sponsorship is changing and how to best support sponsor bodies into the future. Through interviews and surveys late last year and discussions early this year, CHA has learned that as ministry members look ahead, they believe it will be essential to prioritize both new sponsor recruitment and continual sponsor formation. These ministry members say CHA has a critical role to play in these efforts.
To help ministry members advance sponsor recruitment and formation efforts, CHA is developing a sponsor formation framework. This framework will explain how sponsor bodies of all types can develop and implement programming to identify, onboard and continually form their members. The association also is creating related resources, including recruitment and succession planning guides, a sponsor assessment tool, and educational materials.
“We understand that sponsor formation is a lifelong journey. We also understand that sponsors are constantly discerning their work because the environment is changing faster,” says Sr. Teresa “Tere” Maya, CCVI, senior director, theology and sponsorship at CHA.
Sr. Maya says CHA is using a synodal process to support sponsor bodies. The synodal process, as used by the Vatican in recent years, is one that begins by listening to a wide swath of people and then discerns how to respond to further the mission.
Survey and discussion
The resources under development will complement the “Guide for Sponsors in Catholic Health Care” that CHA released in 2021. That guide explains what Catholic health ministry sponsorship is, how it is evolving, the types of sponsorship models the ministry uses, and the responsibilities and ideal personal qualifications and core competencies of sponsors. The guide is a members-only resource.
To determine what new resources ministry sponsor bodies need next, CHA engaged consultants Rich Shively and Paul Stone in conducting one-on-one interviews and an online survey of sponsors last year. The consultants asked about the current state of sponsorship, emerging issues and questions sponsors want addressed. In January, Shively and Stone discussed their findings at a CHA webinar and then at CHA’s Sponsorship Institute.
In a summary, Shively and Stone wrote that a top concern is sponsor body viability, given that many current sponsors are aging and the bodies must recruit the next generation. Another key finding is that sponsors believe it is essential that they continue to have a meaningful impact on the minis-
by
tries they oversee. The study also found that it is important to view sponsor formation through a new lens — as a long-term vocation, with formation taking place throughout a sponsor’s tenure. The study and discussion also surfaced a desire among sponsors for a way to better assess their effectiveness. Sponsors also expressed that it is important to amplify positive stories about Catholic health care for the public.
New framework
CHA is working with Shively, Stone and ministry sponsorship experts to build out a framework for how sponsorship can evolve in a way that addresses the concerns and priorities identified over the past half year.
Sr. Maya explains that the new framework will describe how CHA and member organizations can develop formation programs that promote continuous personal and spiritual growth of individual sponsors and sponsor boards. The framework will provide guidance for sponsor candidates to understand the role and new sponsors to learn how to carry out their responsibilities.
CHA plans to share the initial version of the framework with sponsors in the fall and then to refine it with their feedback.
The new framework will help to inform CHA’s work to tailor existing — or create new — resources and programming to meet sponsors’ evolving needs.
The association will develop a sponsor assessment tool to help sponsor bodies evaluate their effectiveness. To achieve this, it will work to leverage the resources
of the ministry identity assessment tool — ministry systems already are using the tool to assess mission effectiveness — to support the work of sponsor bodies. Dashboards and high-level reports from the ministry identity assessment can help sponsors determine their own effectiveness in directing and influencing the ministry to carry out its mission. The sponsor assessment will be designed to complement governance assessments where appropriate. Plans are in place to start piloting the assessment early next year.
Recruitment, succession guides
CHA is also developing a recruitment guide that will approach sponsorship as a vocation. Sponsor bodies will be able to use the guide in the recruitment and discernment of new sponsors. The guide will outline how to identify and invite potential sponsors to begin discernment and preparation to serve in this ministry. In addition, the guide will help ministries “widen the aperture” to seek new sponsors and share some of the best practices to prepare them for this important role.
Shively says this resource will address a need expressed by sponsors. He says sponsor candidates who are laity “want to understand what they are being called to. They want to understand what they are inheriting.”
Sponsor Formation Program
CHA will also use its learnings from the past year and the new framework to refine its flagship program, the Sponsor Formation Program. CHA is enrolling people this summer for the in-person program next year.
Sladich-Lantz, the recipient of CHA’s 2022 Sister Concilia Moran Award, notes that the Sponsor Formation Program and other in-person sponsor gatherings continue to be impactful for those who take part.
“It is a blessing to see sponsors from across all of Catholic health care in the U.S.,” she says. “It broadens the conversation and experience. And we can engage in conversation with other systems and other ways of living out our call. There is a huge benefit to having this perspective on Catholic health care across the U.S.”
A retrospective
Sr. Maya says amid all the work going on in sponsorship, CHA is concurrently undertaking a retrospective view of what has transpired over the 30 or so years since Catholic health ministries began adopting the then-novel ministerial juridic person sponsorship model. The model allows for the integration of laity into the ministry’s sponsor bodies.
Sr. Maya says CHA is interested in “harvesting the experiences that sponsors have had for wisdom” on how to move forward.
The association is also creating guides for succession planning for sponsors. Mary Anne Sladich-Lantz is on the sponsors’ council of Providence St. Joseph Health; she is on CHA’s sponsorship formation steering committee; and she is frequently on the faculty of CHA sponsors programs. She notes that new sponsors can be difficult to find, and she anticipates sponsor bodies will need to start looking in new places. She notes that CHA is well-positioned to help ministry sponsor bodies to undertake succession planning and recruitment because of its function as a convener of Catholic health care leadership. She says of succession, “This is a conversation we will be having forever.”
In addition to the other materials under development, CHA is refining or creating online resources for educating sponsors and others about the role. This includes “microlearning” sessions, videos and written materials that CHA will introduce beginning later this summer.
Sladich-Lantz says she believes that there is much to learn through this review, including by asking women religious who helped to usher in this era how they came up with this approach, what their vision was, and how the current sponsor bodies are carrying out that vision.
She says this and all the work going on in sponsorship is essential in today’s era. “We are seeing that Catholic health care can and will continue as a force for love in the world, including through the ministerial juridic persons that include laypeople,” she says. “Catholic health care remains strong and a significant force for those on the margins.”
She adds, “This is our ‘burning platform’ — now more than ever, having Catholic health care committed to our social tradition reminds us that every single person is worthy and deserves to flourish.”
This is the third article in a series on how CHA's mission and sponsorship department is reimagining its work.
jminda@chausa.org
Participants interact at CHA's Sponsor Formation Program earlier this year. As the flagship program of CHA's sponsor training, the event prepares individuals to serve as current or prospective members of sponsor bodies to carry out the health ministry of the Catholic Church.
The most recent Sponsor Formation Program session took place in March in Illinois. The next one begins in 2026.
Photos
Stephen J. Serio
Sr. Maya
Sladich-Lantz
Growth strategy equips CHRISTUS Children’s to provide top neurological care
By JULIE MINDA
SAN ANTONIO — When Monica Christina and Mario Pozos learned during pregnancy that their baby girl could have spinal muscular atrophy, Monica recalled what she’d learned while studying to be a physical therapist — most babies diagnosed with the most severe form of the genetic disorder would not live to see their second birthday.
“Those five days between that diagnosis and our meeting with Dr. (Melissa) Svoboda were excruciating,” Monica recalls.
Mario says the diagnosis “was like a death sentence” for the baby.
Monica says the couple was not aware of all the advancements in treatment for SMA-1 until they met with Svoboda, CHRISTUS Children’s division chief of neurology and neurodevelopment. At that first meeting, Svoboda told them of a gene therapy that, when administered at the start of an infant’s development, could diminish and even eliminate the disorder’s effects.
“That first appointment with Dr. Svoboda was a miracle!” says Monica. “She said we had the potential to watch Luna go to college. To get married. It took us time to process it and realize this gene therapy is lifesaving and could give Luna a full life.”
As the Pozos family approached Luna’s first birthday April 2, they credited that Luna is thriving and on a healthy developmental plan to the Zolgensma gene therapy that CHRISTUS Children’s gave her at 5 weeks.
One-stop shop
Cris Daskevich, CEO of CHRISTUS Children’s and senior vice president of maternal services for CHRISTUS Health, says the San Antonio children’s hospital is able to offer patients like Luna cutting-edge treatments because of a service line expansion underway for the past several years. Since learning through assessments that many South Texas families were having to leave the region to obtain pediatric services, CHRISTUS Health has been investing heavily in expanding care access in six focus areas that it calls its pillars of excellence. The Center for Neurosciences that has been handling Luna’s care is one of those pillars.
Daskevich says CHRISTUS Children’s has been building out the infrastructure of the neurosciences center at the flagship hospital in downtown San Antonio and at a network of freestanding pediatric emergency rooms; maternal and pediatric specialty clinics; and outpatient speech, occupational and physical therapy clinics. CHRISTUS Children’s has been recruiting neurology specialists, subspecialists and other clinicians with expertise in the field. It has built out a multidisciplinary team and wraparound services so that patients with a wide variety of neurological conditions can
obtain expert clinical care and access child life, physical therapy, occupational therapy, genetic counseling, nutritional counseling, and other support services. Patients’ families also can get navigation help with obtaining care in the community and with social services.
“We’re working hard to be a one-stop shop,” says Svoboda. “We do all we can to envelop the family.”
Three focus areas
The neurosciences center treats conditions affecting the brain, spinal cord, nervous system and muscles. The center’s services generally are grouped around three main diagnostic areas: neuromuscular conditions, epilepsy and autism.
According to a Feb. 23, 2024, article in Frontiers in Neurology, there are about 600 different pediatric neuromuscular diseases affecting about 1 in 3,000 people worldwide. Neuromuscular conditions affect the nerves controlling the body’s voluntary muscles. Some of these conditions include muscular dystrophy, neuropathy, myopathy and SMA. The neurosciences center has a multidisciplinary team that addresses these and related conditions with a variety of therapies, including gene therapy, surgical intervention, medication, physical therapy and occupational therapy. According to Svoboda, CHRISTUS Children’s is a Muscular Dystrophy Care affiliate and one of the few South Texas providers to offer lifesaving gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
There also is a category of rare genetic disorders called leukodystrophies that affect the central nervous system. Svoboda says CHRISTUS Children’s has the only leukodystrophies care network in Texas.
CHRISTUS Children’s website says epileptic seizures happen in kids when electrical activity in the brain changes their awareness, movement or behavior. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 456,000 U.S. children aged 17 and younger have active epilepsy. The neurosciences center has a multidisciplinary team
that helps devise tailored treatment plans. That treatment could include surgery. A CHRISTUS Children’s blog showcases patient success stories, including numerous cases in which surgery has eliminated seizures.
The CDC says about 1 in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder. The CHRISTUS Children’s website says autism can present as a lack of emotion or empathy, no eye contact, or speech delay in children.
The CHRISTUS Children’s autism team can assess whether a child has autism and provide needed treatment, such as applied behavioral analysis therapy.
At the pediatric hospital’s Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes, or ECHO, Autism Center, team members share their expertise with others. Mainly through virtual sessions, they mentor and educate community members, educators, advocates and others on autism. Their outreach is particularly valuable to underserved, remote and rural communities without nearby access to autism professionals.
No other providers
Svoboda says she finds the wide continuum of services and support that CHRISTUS Children’s has built exciting. “We are the only ones in South Texas doing some of these therapies,” she says.
For some of the advanced genetic work, the pediatric hospital is one of just a few facilities in the nation offering such care, Svoboda says. She notes that it is in part because of philanthropy that the neurosciences center has been able to build out its programming so effectively.
Svoboda says that neurological conditions often involve years of treatment for patients, and that can be disruptive and difficult for them and their families. Having to go to numerous appointments over many years is taxing, especially for working families and families with socioeconomic barriers, she says. She notes that it is vital to such families in South Texas that advanced treatment is available nearby.
Monica and Mario Pozos say they certainly are grateful for this. The children’s hospital is just a few miles from their San Antonio home. They say they are amazed that the exact, extremely advanced care their daughter needed was so close by.
Glowing with love
The couple say that the past year and a half has been a blur of blood tests, doctor appointments, medical emergencies, anxiety, elation and, perhaps now, some stability.
SMA was nowhere on the couple’s radar screen when a 12-week prenatal blood test revealed Monica was a carrier of a recessive gene for SMA. Follow-up genetic testing of Mario revealed he too carried the recessive gene. A cheek swab of Luna immediately after her birth confirmed she had the most severe form of the condition, SMA-1.
Mario says CHRISTUS Children’s team has been a constant presence in their lives since the couple’s status as carriers was verified. This included when Monica had a medical scare while Luna was in utero — once the CHRISTUS Children’s team verified Luna was unharmed, Monica underwent a surgery at a different local hospital. The CHRISTUS Children’s team also played a vital role when tests just prior to the baby’s gene infusion flagged potential heart problems for Luna that turned out to not be a threat.
Just one early injection was needed to save Luna’s life and change the trajectory of her neuromuscular condition. Once she was past the three-month recovery time from the injection, she began routine visits to CHRISTUS Children’s to get physical, speech and other therapy.
Mario says Luna loves her team of providers, and they have shown their love for her. “Every time they see her, they glow with love, and she reciprocates — she gets so excited to see them,” Mario says.
He adds, “It is invaluable to have this team in her life.” jminda@chausa.org
Read more at chausa.org/chw
On a blog, CHRISTUS Children’s showcases life-changing outcomes possible with advanced treatments.
CHRISTUS Children’s neurosciences center attracts patients from around the world.
CHRISTUS Health breaks ground on $84 million hospital in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Irving, Texas-based CHRISTUS Health plans to build an $84 million hospital in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It is to open in 2028.
The health system broke ground in April on the 450,000-plus-square-foot facility, which will be called CHRISTUS Muguerza Los Cabos Hospital.
The 75-bed private hospital will offer nearly 30 medical specialties, including cardiology, oncology, gynecology, emergency care, family medicine, pediatrics and neurosurgery. The facility will have advanced technology, including systems that use arti-
ficial intelligence. The hospital will employ about 250 clinicians, specialists and other associates.
According to a press release, the new hospital will demonstrate CHRISTUS Health’s “strategic commitment to bring quality, compassionate care to a burgeoning tourist destination with a growing local population.” The facility will be in Cabo San Lucas’ high-growth tourist corridor. The city attracts nearly 4 million visitors a year, and more than 350,000 people live in the region. This includes more than 23,000 U.S. citizens, says the press release on the new hospital.
The release says there are increasing health care demands in the region.
CHRISTUS Health says the hospital will strengthen the health care system that the state offers, alleviating the burden currently faced by public hospitals, expanding medical coverage and better addressing the growing need for specialized services in the region. Cabo San Lucas is in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.
The hospital will serve all comers, including local residents.
Plans call for the new hospital to feature cultural elements important to area
residents, materials sourced locally, and art installations reflecting the identity of Baja California Sur. The facility also will have energy-efficient, sustainable and ecofriendly features.
CHRISTUS Health has a presence in the United States, Mexico, Chile and Colombia. In Mexico, CHRISTUS Health has 14 hospitals and a network of outpatient sites in seven Mexican states, not including the facility the health system is building in Cabo San Lucas and another hospital that the system is building in a state where it already has a presence.
Mario and Monica Christina Pozos of San Antonio with their daughter Luna. CHRISTUS Children’s has been providing lifesaving neurological interventions for Luna, who was diagnosed as a newborn with spinal muscular atrophy.
Svoboda
Daskevich
Bon Secours Mercy Health’s new employer brand is designed to honor workers
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
This spring, Bon Secours Mercy Health launched a new employer brand to honor and celebrate its nearly 60,000 associates. The health system also wanted the brand to appeal to prospective associates.
The tagline is “Bring your best. Share your heart. Be fulfilled.” The brand is built on Bon Secours Mercy Health’s pillars of mission, growth and flexibility and promises to employees: “We’ll do good together, we’ll grow your gifts and we’ll champion you.”
Used in employee emails, internal newsletters, recruiting and onboarding materials, some social media channels, and promotional items such as water bottles and notebooks, the visuals for the brand include a design with geometric shapes meant to evoke the pieces of a stained-glass window. Associates can customize colors of the design to use as background screens for virtual meetings.
In the coming months, Bon Secours Mercy Health leaders will measure the brand’s impact with surveys and other data.
Catholic Health World spoke with Erin Lickliter, vice president of associate communications, and Allan Calonge, chief people officer, core operations, about the brand, why they wanted to create it, and what they hope it will accomplish. Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Why and how did this start?
Lickliter: We probably started almost two years ago. Our human resources team started work around an associate value proposition. As you probably heard from other health care systems and just employers in general, competing for talent is tough. One of the things that we kept talking about was there was a real opportunity for us to narrow the focus on what we really stood for, to really understand what was important to our associates, what was important to candidates. Then we can go back and say, Do we have the right programs? Are we building out the right initiatives, policies, things like that, to really focus on the areas that are most important to our associates and potential candidates?
Calonge: We undertook a pretty lengthy time, probably about 18 months, for study and analysis. We did a lot of internal and external analysis. When we got to the end of this, we figured out the three areas of distinctiveness. One we’ve done really well for a long time, which is our mission. But two others were growth and flexibility. Folks want to grow. They want to see that clear career progression and to provide for their families. They wanted flexibility within work: shifts, benefits, how they can take time off or care for a newborn or adopted baby.
We started to create programs that spoke to these different areas. But at the same time, in partnership with our marketing and communications team, we said, OK, we’re going to build good meat-and-potato programs, but how are we going to make this food look really good? What is the icing on the cake, so to speak? We felt that the
expression of it needed to be pronounced.
Tell me about the geometric design.
Calonge: It’s based off of stained-glass windows. And so that inspiration was a pretty subliminal acknowledgement of our mission and our Catholic heritage. It speaks to the uniqueness of our associates. We’re a very inclusive environment. We celebrate the dignity of all our associates. And we felt that this pattern not only celebrated the women religious who founded us but also speaks to just the uniqueness of who we are and our coming together.
Lickliter: What we also heard loud and clear from our associates, especially when it came to the colors, is they really want to feel the joy and warmth that they feel in their jobs. We have a really bright color palette that allows us to do some eclectic color groupings. It’s the sum of parts that makes
the most successful team, rather than just the individual piece. So, when you think about stained glass, stained glass is beautiful in its entirety. If you saw one piece, it’s nice, but it’s so much better when you have everything around it. And that’s one of the things that we talked about with our associates, and what they felt too about the power of a team and working with a team. We felt like the stained-glass representation really helped bring that to life as well.
What do you hope this new branding will accomplish?
Lickliter: We want people to feel proud of where they work, which we also know drives loyalty. Ultimately, it’s less expensive and easier to keep talent. We do hope that this connects people together. It reminds them that we are the organization that they chose to work for. That’s who we are, and they can have the best experience that they want to have here, but retention is really top of mind for us. We’ve seen some great strides in improving retention since COVID, especially in our nursing turnover, and so having this continues to add that focus on our associates.
As we’ve been introducing it, we’ve done a lot of webinars and in-person meetings, talking to people about what it means and why we’re doing it. And what I’ve heard repeatedly is, “I’m so glad we’re doing this.” They want us to focus as much on their experience as the patient experience, and we know that if our associates feel cared for and supported, then that’s the experience that they’re going to deliver for our patients.
Calonge: The thing that we saw in our research was that there was a lot of homogeny, a lot of sameness in the way that employers, especially health care employers, are marketing to candidates. You always have the picture of the nurse, or the doctor with the stethoscope, and just some static font and static color, static typography. But what we are trying to do is just be more distinctive and stand out.
Also, this world is so crazy right now. There’s a lot of trouble, there’s a lot of angst, and so for us to be a bastion of mission and purpose has been really helpful in many of our markets. People tell us that overwhelmingly, in our associate experience survey, affinity to Bon Secours Mercy Health, their desire and willingness to recommend it as a place to work or a place for care has been bolstered by our mission. We feel like this brand helps us to convey that to the marketplace. That’s what we’re trying to do to counteract those challenges.
Do you have advice for other systems who might want to do this?
Calonge: I think you just got to start by understanding the essence of who you are. I think for Catholic health systems, that would be much easier than nondenominational nonprofits. It’s so easy for us. When you have Jesus Christ in your mission statement, it’s pretty easy. But I think for any health system, you just need to understand who you are. What makes you tick? What is your purpose? Certainly, patient care, caring for your communities is going to be a universal theme. But I think you need to also lay the framework for perception and awareness and analytics of your workforce. What’s driving exits or terminations? How are leaders behaving? How are they engaging? What influences all sorts of associate behavior?
Then number two: What do you do to be distinctive? What are the two or three things that you can anchor to that? Then go through a really intentional navel-gazing to say, How are we going to express that value proposition? What do our sponsors and board think? What do our community stakeholders think about it? And then, put something out that’s relevant, that’s catchy, that’s vibrant, and you have what I think we have right now.
vhahn@chausa.org
A new employer brand is incorporated in this Bon Secours Mercy Health ad seeking medical assistants. The ad includes a geometric design meant to evoke the pieces of a stained-glass window.
Lickliter
Calonge
Collaborative pairs nursing homes, schools in mission to improve eldercare
By LISA EISENHAUER
When she picked up a nursing student earlier this year at the end of an educational rotation at the St. Anne Home eldercare facility in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Helen K. Burns says the young woman walked out beaming.
“What the student told me is that she really believed it was positive for her learning, and her presence was positive for the patients’ health and well-being as well,” says Burns, a professor and the inaugural chair of the Department of Nursing at Saint Vincent College. “They understood she was a student, but they were so gracious to talk with her, to help her learn, answer her questions, and to accept her presence there with them as a caregiver.”
The student’s experience was part of a partnership between Saint Vincent, a Catholic liberal arts and sciences college in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and St. Anne Home. Their pairing is under the umbrella of the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative, a growing initiative focused on improving nursing home resident care, nursing student education, and nursing faculty support.
The initiative provides:
Webinars and a library of resources including sample meeting agendas to help nursing homes and schools of nursing start or strengthen partnerships
Guidance on improving eldercare and gerontological nursing education through a network of peers and educators
Exposure for nursing students to careers in eldercare
Support to implement the AgeFriendly Health Systems framework, a set of practices designed to align care for older patients with what matters to them
The collaborative was piloted from 2021 to 2023 with four nursing homes and three schools of nursing. Those partnerships led to 677 nursing staff trained in Age-Friendly care, 591 nursing home residents receiving Age-Friendly care, 510 students completing clinical rotations in nursing homes, 40 nursing educators engaged in the initiative, and the curation of 89 guides, a textbook and other resources to support nursing practice and leadership in nursing homes. The pilot proved so successful that the collaborative launched a second phase in 2023 and now encompasses more than 70 nursing homes and more than 20 schools of nursing across Pennsylvania.
Reviving an old model
Jane Carmody is a senior program officer at The John A. Hartford Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the care of older adults that is one of the founders and funders of the collaborative. She says the collaborative’s roots are in a teaching nursing home model that was funded in the 1980s by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy focused on improving health. That model created partnerships between nursing homes, schools of nursing, medical schools and social work schools. Residents of homes that adopted the model were among its beneficiaries because rates of heavy sedation, catheterization and restraint decreased, according to a study published in 1995.
In 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging nursing homes and a workforce shortage was setting in, The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation decided to revisit the teaching nursing home model, this time incorporating the Age-Friendly framework developed a few years earlier. In the AgeFriendly framework, caregivers are trained and encouraged to provide holistic patientcentered care around “the 4Ms”: what medication patients are on, how mobile they are, their mentation or mental acuity, and
their view of what matters to them.
Carmody says the 4Ms are the “common language” of the partners in the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative. “It gives them a solid support to help develop the geriatric curriculum,” she says.
Looking forward
The Pittsburgh-based Jewish Healthcare Foundation is another funder of the collaborative. It is also in charge of establishing and coordinating the collaborative’s partnerships, with Nancy Zionts, chief program and strategy officer, as the project’s principal investigator.
Anneliese Perry, program manager for aging initiatives, and Maureen SaxonGioia, nurse project manager, both at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, also have lead roles in the work. They start new pairings by meeting with leaders from the nursing homes and colleges, explaining how academic partnerships work, and going over the Age-Friendly concepts. Then the two sides craft plans for developing and advancing their partnership.
Perry says leaders of nursing homes that participated in the collaborative’s pilot said it gave them hope, especially after the misery and workforce challenges brought on by the pandemic.
“After everything that they went through during COVID, it helped them look forward,” she says. “It helped them know that there are people that want to bring new life into longterm care, that want to reach out to schools of nursing to get people to realize that this is an opportunity for nurses to really use that autonomy to be hands-on in the decisionmaking in the care process.”
Saxon-Gioia says the collaborative gives each participating institution flexibility in how they work with their partner and in the goals they set for their teamwork.
As part of their work with the collaborative, she and Perry convene learning sessions for leaders of the institutions and share best practices. “We are so excited about what we’re doing now,” Saxon-Gioia says. “We are growing, evolving, learning and adapting as we go along.”
While the collaborative only pairs nursing homes and nursing schools in Pennsylvania, institutions and groups based elsewhere can join as friends and access its online resources. The collaborative had about 70 such friends by April.
Carmody says the success of the collaborative in Pennsylvania and the interest in it from outside the state are building support for a third phase that expands the collaborative nationwide, but she acknowledges “there’s work to get to that point.” She notes that the collaborative got its start in Pennsylvania in part because established organizations, such as the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, the Independence Foundation, the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, the Pennsylvania Association of Directors of Nursing Administration and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Nursing Schools Association, championed the program. Similar support would be needed to set up the groundwork for the collaborative in other states.
A growing need
Meanwhile, in Greensburg, Director of Nursing Ann Donovan has high hopes for St. Anne Home’s pairing with Saint Vincent. That partnership started last year with discussions between her and Burns. Visits to St. Anne Home by nursing students started this year.
“Anytime you can attract new students to this care setting is really desired because a lot of times individuals entering the nursing profession or doing it as a second career are not necessarily interested in long-term care,” Donovan says. “It doesn’t seem as flashy or romantic. So, with this, we’re encouraged they get to see it in a different light.”
Donovan says on-site rotations often change students’ views of eldercare. “My favorite thing to hear is ‘Wow, it’s not what I expected. It’s busier,’ or ‘It’s more complex,’” she says.
Not only is participation in the collaborative relatively new for Saint Vincent, so is the college’s whole nursing program. It launched last August with a bachelor’s track. A master’s program starts this summer.
Burns says the college was intentional from the start about covering geriatric care in the nursing curriculum. One goal is to dispel the notion that people in nursing homes aren’t vibrant or active and that caring for them might be less exciting than other nursing work.
“We’re hoping that by introducing care for the geriatric population early in the curriculum and throughout the curriculum and creating really meaningful clinical placements, the students are going to see the benefit of this as a specialty when they graduate,” Burns says.
In Southwestern Pennsylvania, where the college and St. Anne Home are located, Burns says eldercare is increasingly in demand as people over the age of 85 are one of the fastest-growing segments of the population.
“Our geography makes us very aware of this population, and the need to assure that our students understand how to keep elders healthy,” Burns says.
leisenhauer@chausa.org
Helen K. Burns, professor and chair of the Department of Nursing, talks with students at Saint Vincent College, a Catholic liberal arts and sciences college in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The college’s nursing school, which started last year, is taking part in the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative.
Carmody Perry
Saxon-Gioia
Zionts
Budget plans could shrink enrollment in health insurance exchanges
By LISA EISENHAUER
What has been steady growth in coverage under the health insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act could come to an end under budget plans making their way through Congress.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that 24.3 million Americans are getting health insurance this year through the exchanges, also called the health insurance marketplace. The number is a 13% increase from 2024 and up from 8 million in 2014, the first year of the exchanges.
Meanwhile, an analysis released May 11 by the Congressional Budget Office found that if enhanced premium tax credits for those using the exchanges lapse, the number of people without health insurance will increase by 4.2 million by 2034.
The expanded credits were put in place in 2020 and will sunset at the end of this year unless Congress extends them. Legislation approved by the House in May as part of budget planning assumes the credits will end.
The exchanges are open to any American who is not on Medicare. CMS says nearly 13 million people who use the exchanges
Medicaid
From page 1
become uninsured if the budget reconciliation bill working its way through Congress becomes law. The bill cuts an estimated $625 billion from Medicaid over 10 years.
Other proposed changes are to add new work requirements, make it easier for states to cancel people’s coverage, and reduce funding to the 12 states that use their own tax revenues to provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.
Mike Slubowski, president and CEO of Trinity Health, pointed out that cutting billions of dollars from Medicaid would hurt communities, not just those who rely on it for coverage.
“We’ve seen it firsthand,” said Slubowski, whose system has facilities in 26 states. “When people lose coverage, they skip checkups, they stop taking medications, and eventually they show up in the ER sicker and in need of more costly care that could have been prevented. And that’s not just bad for health, it strains hospitals, overcrowds our emergency rooms, and drives up costs for everyone, insured or not.”
Slubowski pointed out that Medicaid coverage is a bipartisan issue. “All of the legislators, regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on, have a lot of constituents that are on Medicaid,” he said. “One out of every five Americans get coverage in Medicaid, and when you combine that with Medicare, another federal and public program, this is an enormous part of their constituencies.”
A safety net for all
Ascension President Eduardo Conrado said 20% of the patients his system serves across 16 states and Washington, D.C., are covered by Medicaid. For those patients, he said, Ascension absorbs about 34% of the cost of care. For patients who are uninsured or underinsured, he said the system picks up 88% of the cost of care.
“For them and many others, access to health care depends on decisions being made right now in Washington,” he said.
Conrado emphasized that Ascension supports efforts to remove fraud, waste and abuse, which the Trump administration has said is being targeted by the Medicaid changes. But he said the proposal under consideration would result in unnecessary red tape that would cause people to lose coverage.
“Medicaid is not a handout. It’s a safety net,” Conrado said. “It ensures that chil-
*Those over 65 are ineligible.
HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE BY THE NUMBERS
are receiving tax credits to help lower their premiums. Of those, 42% are on plans that cost less than $10 a month.
In a press call hosted by CHA about the impact of proposed cuts to Medicaid, Trinity Health President and CEO Mike Slubowski noted that ending the enhanced premium tax credits could be a “double whammy” for care providers. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the Medicaid cuts under discussion will cause 10.3 million Americans to lose coverage.
“The impetus has been to try to get people off Medicaid but have them purchase
products on the exchange at discounted prices,” Slubowski said. “If Medicaid goes away and the exchange options go away, people are going to be uncovered. It’s pretty devasting when you think about the big picture here.”
In a letter sent May 13 to the committee’s chairman, CHA President and CEO Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM, expressed the organization’s opposition to letting the enhanced premium tax credits lapse and warned of dire effects if they do. “On average, premiums will increase 93% if the tax credits are allowed to expire, and an esti-
MEDICAID CHANGES
A look at the estimated impact on Medicaid/CHIP over the next 10 years based on the budget reconciliation bill passed May 22 by the House.
Expected loss of funding: $625 BILLION
How many will lose coverage: 10.3 MILLION
Current enrollment: 72 MILLION
How many will become uninsured: 7.6 MILLION
Work requirements for the adults in the expansion group
Limits on states’ ability to raise their share of revenues through provider taxes
Increased barriers to enrolling and for renewing coverage
dren, seniors, low-income families and people with disabilities get basic health care.”
Short-term gain, long-term pain
Erik Wexler, president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health, said that health care in the United States is at an “inflection point,” facing what he called a poly-crisis of inflation, labor shortages, tariffs, and Medicaid cuts. The pandemic destabilized health care in this country, and the proposed cuts could destabilize it in the future, he said.
“For potential short-term gain ... we will have long-term pain, and all of health care will be affected by that,” he said.
Joe Hodges, lead regional executive for SSM Health who oversees operations in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Okla-
CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE
homa, spoke about rural hospitals that are operating on slim margins or even negative ones, like 70% of rural hospitals in Oklahoma, 87% of those in Kansas, and 76% in Washington state. Recognizing the vulnerability of people who live in rural areas, SSM Health now manages seven rural hospitals in Oklahoma.
Hodges shared statistics related to rural populations and rural health care, such as noting that a quarter of all veterans live in rural communities and that it can take nearly three hours in parts of rural Oklahoma to drive to a hospital that provides obstetrical services.
“All these people matter,” he said. “They all need to have access to care, and it is our responsibility to advocate for them, and that is why we’re here today.”
Seeking broader solutions
Individual systems have advocated on behalf of Medicaid in Washington, and CHA has organized collective fly-in days for health care leaders to talk to lawmakers, Sr. Mary said. She noted that while advocating on the Hill, they ran into colleagues from Catholic Charities USA who saw the proposed cuts as not just a health care issue.
“This is a social service issue, because they’re recognizing the impact it’s going to have on that population, which will increase their need for additional services,” Sr. Mary said.
Conrado said that at the end of the day, hospitals want to keep populations health-
Source:
mated 5 million Americans will lose health coverage entirely, including nearly 2 million people with chronic conditions,” the letter said.
In addition to the loss of coverage from ending the expanded premium tax credits, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a rule change for marketplace enrollees put in place by the Trump administration will cause another 1.8 million to lose coverage. The new rule includes a shorter enrollment period and stricter requirements for documenting income.
leisenhauer@chausa.org
ier at a lower cost. “In order to do that, I think there’s a direct relationship between the government and providers like us nonprofits to be able to incentivize keeping the population healthy and out of the emergency rooms,” such as being able to provide the right medications for chronic conditions, he said.
He added: “I think the discussion beyond the cuts that are happening now is, how do we rethink population health, payment models and then partnership between nonprofits and government?”
Slubowski said a potential means of cutting Medicaid costs without reducing access is to explore alternative finance models. “We can improve outcomes at a lower cost if providers are given that responsibility instead of working through middlemen like commercial insurance companies that first want to earn their margin,” he said. “They’re very adept at denying claims, frankly, of needed care that we provide to people.”
Care for all Hodges, of SSM Health, pointed out that if people lose health care coverage under the proposed changes, the health system will have to shift costs, which could mean higher commercial insurance rates on employers.
“So it just moves from one bucket to another bucket,” he said. “We have to be able to shift that around in order to continue with our mission and providing services to all people that walk through our doors. Because everyone who walks through our doors, we are going to take care of them, no matter their payer, no matter where they’re from. Those things are irrelevant to us. When people need us, we are there. That’s why we’re in Catholic health care.”
vhahn@chausa.org
Source: Congressional Budget Office; KFF
are female
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; KFF
SSM Health leader reflects on teaching future Pope Leo at divinity school in Chicago
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Fr. Thomas Nairn, OFM, was sipping lemonade in a cafe in Assisi, Italy, on a break during a mission trip with SSM Health leaders, watching a livestream on a colleague’s phone. It was May 8. The chimney on the top of the Sistine Chapel had plumed white smoke, signaling that there was a new pope. Now, it was time to hear the words “Habemus papam,” Latin for “We have a pope.”
Fr. Nairn and his colleague, SSM Health Vice President of Mission and Ethics
Michael Miller Jr., peered at the screen. When they heard the name Roberto, Fr. Nairn could only remember two Robertos at the conclave: Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, and Fr. Nairn’s former student, who he knew as Bob Prevost.
“And so when they said Prevost, honestly, I grabbed the phone from his hands,” Fr. Nairn said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
He was in “absolute shock” for several minutes, barely able to talk.
Fr. Nairn, 77, was once a teacher at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. The man who is now Pope Leo XIV earned his master in divinity there in 1982, a year before he was ordained.
Fr. Nairn taught the future pope in at least one course, likely either sexual ethics or medical ethics, or maybe both.
“I threw all those records away when I left CTU, knowing I would never, ever have recourse to them again,” he said. “Ha, ha, ha, so much for that.”
Fr. Nairn taught at CTU from 1980 until 2008, when he became the senior director of ethics and theology at CHA. He served there until he was elected provincial minister of the Sacred Heart Province of Franciscans in 2017, a position he held until 2023. He now serves on the SSM Health board and on SSM Health Ministries, the sponsoring body for preserving SSM Health’s Roman Catholic identity.
He lives in Chicago, where the excitement for the locally born pontiff is palpable.
“You know, sure, he’s one of us, especially in Chicago,” Fr. Nairn said, pointing out the Chicago Sun-Times’ “DA POPE!” headline announcing the big news. “But what I do hope is that things will settle down, and that the excitement over his being American from Chicago will turn to excitement over the things he says. Not to get political, but I do think our country needs to hear some of the stuff he says.”
Fr. Nairn said he hasn’t had regular contact with his former student, but they met up two or three times over the years. Once, while the future pontiff served as superior general of the Augustinians, Fr. Nairn was at a meeting in Rome and popped into his office near St. Peter’s Square. The two caught up on each other’s lives and reminisced about old times.
Thoughtful, smart, humorous
Holding up a photo of Pope Leo from his time at CTU that shows a younger, slightly thinner man with a moustache, a dark head of hair curled around his ears, Fr. Nairn said that’s how he remembers him.
Fr. Nairn met several Augustinians during his time at CTU. Pope Leo and one of his classmates, Robert Dodaro, stand out most. Fr. Dodaro is now an Augustinian academic and priest. “They were both smart as whips,” Fr. Nairn said.
He remembers the future pope as being a “little shy,” but engaged in different activities at the school. He also remembers him being thoughtful, “a very nice guy,” and “an enjoyable person to be around. He had
a nice sense of humor. He liked to use it often.”
Fr. Nairn believes, based on his writings and speeches, that Pope Leo was influenced by his time at CTU. The school has always emphasized social justice issues, and so have the Augustinians and the Franciscans.
“What’s interesting, and I think you’ve seen it already in some of his first thoughts, but what an awful lot of people today are calling ‘woke’ has been a part of both the Augustinian tradition and the Franciscan tradition for 800 years,” he said. “So in a lot of ways, he is simply stating what the medieval tradition has always been.”
Fr. Nairn says he believes the new pope will visit the United States, but it may not be a priority. The Catholics of the United States represent just 4% of the Catholic Church, and the pope spent much of his adult life as a missionary and church leader in Peru, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Fr. Nairn is eager to read and hear more from Pope Leo. “I hope he’ll have a long reign, and if that’s the case, he’s probably going to be the last pope I’m going to see,” Fr. Nairn said. “But I honestly hope and believe that his time as pope will be beneficial to the church and beneficial to the church in the United States.”
vhahn@chausa.org
Pope Leo XIV
Francis, who had stood on the same balcony on Easter morning to bless Rome and the world. Pope Francis died the next day, April 21.
“Allow me to extend that same blessing: God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail!” Pope Leo said. “All of us are in God’s hands.”
Speaking on behalf of CHA, President and CEO Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM, said: “We pray that Pope Leo XIV will inspire all people of goodwill to open their hearts and heed Christ’s teaching to love one another. For those of us serving in Catholic health care, we joyfully commit ourselves to doing all we can to uplift Pope Leo’s work by being ambassadors for healing, peace, justice, and unity.”
history of speaking out on behalf of the poor and the disenfranchised,” Kaiser said. “We pray he will be a voice for the vulnerable, and be a holy example of Jesus’ command to love one another. May he lead us in the path of peace, hope and health for every person, family and community, especially those most in need.”
Erik Wexler, Providence St. Joseph Health president and CEO, also expressed joy on behalf of the system in a post on LinkedIn:
Scan to read an extended version of this story.
“As part of the healing ministry of Jesus, we join the global community in praying for him as he promotes the dignity of all people, especially those who are poor and vulnerable,” he wrote.
Fr. Joseph Cardone, chief mission officer of Bon Secours Mercy Health, expressed hope that the new pope will continue the work of his predecessor. “The cardinals chose someone committed to the reforms Pope Francis began,” Fr. Cardone wrote in a statement. “Pope Leo will move forward in his own unique way, but we know the direction in which he is headed.”
Laura Kaiser, president and CEO, said SSM Health joined Catholics around the world in celebrating the new pope.
“We extend our prayers to Pope Leo XIV, and look to him as a unifying leader with a
Hope. Healing. Peace.
We are all a spark of the divine.
Along with our foundresses, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, we extend heartfelt congratulations to Pope Leo XIV. Together, our mission remains to serve those in need with dignity and respect.
In a statement on the new pontiff, Ascension said: “We welcome his leadership and look forward to his guidance as he shepherds the church in a time of great hope and challenge. As a Catholic health ministry, we remain committed to carrying forward the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. We pray that Pope Leo XIV will be supported and strengthened by the Holy Spirit as he leads the church with wisdom, humility and a heart for the most vulnerable.”
In a LinkedIn post, CHRISTUS Health said: “Today, we join the global community in celebrating the joyous election of Pope Leo XIV. May the papacy of his holiness be blessed with wisdom, strength and grace, and may it bring forth a renewed sense of hope and peace to communities around the globe.”
Fr. Nairn
Pope Leo XIV as a CTU student
Women of Peace
From page 1
To help fulfill that responsibility, the system last year launched the Women of Peace movement. “We say movement very intentionally,” said Ness. “It’s not a program; it’s not a campaign. It truly is about how we support, develop, nurture and care for our 14,000 female caregivers within this ministry.”
PeaceHealth has hospitals, clinics and medical centers in Alaska, Washington and Oregon.
Research consistently shows that women in the United States are far less likely are to be promoted to managerial or leadership roles. There are many reasons, including gender bias, societal expectations, or lack of support and mentorship. Within PeaceHealth, there are more men than women in executive leadership roles, and about 60% of physicians and clinicians are men.
“We want to make sure that (female) leaders and caregivers have lots of opportunities within PeaceHealth, that they don’t have to leave this organization to find another role or another opportunity,” said Ness. “How do we create those career pathways? How do we provide professional development? How do we make connections that help them feel like they belong here, that there’s a connection to a higher purpose?”
Practical solutions
About a year ago, Ness put a team together to have informal conversations about how to help women at PeaceHealth. Building on Ness’ vision to honor the system’s legacy of courageous female caregivers and on some programs and initiatives already in place, the team laid the groundwork for what became Women of Peace.
The movement includes a series of video profiles of female caregivers at PeaceHealth. The videos are emailed monthly to colleagues and posted to PeaceHealth social media channels. The profiles are meant as an opportunity to get to know each other’s stories. Some of the women featured talk about past and current struggles. Several scenes are filmed at the caregivers’ homes or with their family members.
“When I was younger, my primary focus was on myself, but as I grew and matured, you know, I realized that life is definitely bigger than the sum of the things that I have around,” Denise Gideon, system vice president of operations, program integration and implementation, said in her video. “We all have a deeper responsibility to society. It doesn’t matter where you start in life, we all have the opportunity and the ability to change not only our trajectory but the lives of others that we come in contact with.”
In her video, Trevecca Winters said one of her favorite things about being a social
worker is continuing to help people grow in the profession.
Winters is the supervisor of medical social work at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, Oregon. “When I think about leaving a legacy for women at PeaceHealth, I think it would be to never give up, and that we are powerful and strong, and that we can make a huge difference in this work,” she added.
Said Ness: “At the end of the day, we all come to this work with a different story, and different experiences, but we are a community of caregivers who feel very passionate about the work that we do, our commitment to caring for our communities. I think these profiles highlight that spirit in a very transformational way.”
More support Other Women of Peace movement efforts include:
Establishing a “micro mentorship” program that pairs a senior leader with a junior mentee.
Creating calming spaces that are supportive of women such as renovated bathrooms stocked with items like feminine hygiene products, deodorant and combs. PeaceHealth leaders are conducting an audit of spaces and looking at things like how accessible they are to caregivers.
Supporting women-led organizations. In November, the movement donated $105,000 and split it between three recipients: Oasis in Bellingham, Washington, which helps the migrant Latino community; the YWCA of Clark County in Vancouver, Washington, whose mission is to empower women and eliminate racism; and Tip Tap Grow Performing Arts Preschool in Eugene, Oregon, which provides childcare centered around performing arts, play-based learning and the Montessori approach.
In November, PeaceHealth launched a
lactation credit program for physicians and clinicians. The program allows new parents who breastfeed to schedule a 30-minute “lactation hold” during each half day for pumping or nursing. Each hold is credited as a set of work relative value units, or RVUs, so workers are not penalized financially for taking time away from a workday.
The idea originated from one of PeaceHealth’s male physicians, said Dr. Melissa Edwards, chief executive for PeaceHealth Medical Group. “He had been bringing it to me for a little while, kind of just nudging me about it, saying, ‘You know, it doesn’t impact me personally, but we’ve got young female physicians and clinicians who are really trying to balance their work life and personal life, and I could see where this would be a benefit.’”
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, even from other staffers beyond childbearing age, said Edwards. “This is a big deal,” one of her former clinical partners wrote to her. “And my formerly lactating self is thankful for our women and physicians of the future.”
This change shows that PeaceHealth recognizes these employees have lives outside of their profession, Edwards said. They should be supported while breastfeeding their babies in the first year of life, a practice they recommend to patients, she pointed out.
“It’s that notion of putting your money where your mouth is,” said Edwards.
Also in November, PeaceHealth hosted a formal launch event of the Women of Peace movement for more than 100 female leaders across PeaceHealth. “We really came together and said, you know, this charge is on us,” said Ness. “You’re all in leadership roles. It’s our duty and aligned with our heritage to do more. You make PeaceHealth the best it can be today and ensure that we leave PeaceHealth better than we found it.”
The health system is planning similar events at the local level “to make sure we’re bringing everyone into the conversation,” said Ness.
Measuring success
Leaders plan to measure the Women of Peace movement’s success through feedback and other metrics. They have already seen job retention rates among female caregivers rise, from 81% in 2023 to 86% in 2024. A survey of male and female caregivers saw improvement across several areas in that time period, including increased feelings of belonging, being treated with respect, and pride in PeaceHealth.
While reflecting on the Women of Peace movement, Ness recalls the words of Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Congregational Councillor Sr. Kathleen Pruitt, who attended the November leadership event. Sr. Pruitt will often say: “Let us be who we say we are.”
Said Ness: “And I think this is absolutely the epitome of us trying to be who we say we are.” vhahn@chausa.org
KEEPING UP
PRESIDENTS AND CEOS
Brian Brennan to Hospital Sisters Health System Central Illinois market president and CEO. In addition, Brennan will be president and CEO of HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield. The market includes HSHS St. John’s Hospital; HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital, Decatur; HSHS St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital, Effingham; HSHS St. Francis Hospital, Litchfield; and HSHS Good Shepherd Hospital, Shelbyville. Prior to joining HSHS, Brennan was chief operating officer of the greater Austin region of Baylor Scott and White Healthcare in Texas.
Organizations within Ascension have made these changes:
Jamie Youssef to CEO of Ascension Texas, from senior vice president, network development and service lines with HCA Healthcare.
Lori Tackett to president of Via Christi St. Teresa in Wichita, Kansas. She was chief nursing officer and chief operating officer for both Via Christi St. Teresa and Via Christi Rehabilitation Hospital.
ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES
Stephanie Clements to chief nurse executive of Mercy health system, which is based in Chesterfield, Missouri.
PeaceHealth of Vancouver, Washington, and facilities within that system have made these changes:
Dr. Matthew Bzdega to chief medical officer for PeaceHealth Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence, Oregon.
Julie Eastman to PeaceHealth senior vice president and chief information officer.
James Roundtree to chief operating officer of PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, Oregon.
Elva Sipin to chief operating officer of PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center of Longview, Washington.
Michael Skehan to chief operating officer of PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center of Vancouver.
Mary Lou Tate to chief financial officer of the PeaceHealth Oregon network, which is based in Springfield.
Organizations within Ascension have made these changes:
Dr. Maurice Duggins to chief medical officer of Via Christi with a primary focus on Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph hospital in Wichita, Kansas.
Travis Francis to administrator of Via Christi Rehabilitation Hospital in Wichita.
Lydia Brown to president of the Mercy Medical Center Foundation of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Skehan
Bzdega
Ness
Denise Gideon, PeaceHealth vice president of operations, program integration and implementation, speaks about her background in a video for the Women of Peace movement.
Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Congregational Councillor Sr. Kathleen Pruitt speaks at the Women of Peace launch event in November.
Edwards
Winters
Cam Stockdale to chief financial officer of Mercy Health — West Hospital in Cincinnati, part of Bon Secours Mercy Health.
Brennan Eastman Tate Youssef Clements Sipin
Duggins
Postpartum care
From page 1
phone, including through messaging. Kathman called several times when her blood pressure was abnormal to ask what to do.
“I would have gone to the emergency department if I hadn’t been able to call and receive quick correspondence for peace of mind,” says Kathman. An emergency department visit would not only have been scary, she says it would have been difficult to manage, especially if she had a toddler and newborn in tow.
With the support from St. Anne Hospital in Burien, Washington, Kathman successfully managed her blood pressure, was able to wean off her blood pressure medication within a month of starting it, avoided the emergency department and, most importantly, suffered no ill health effects from her condition.
The postpartum health program “made a huge difference, it was amazing,” Kathman says. “It should be the standard of care for every mom.”
Postpartum safety net
Sapico developed the postpartum wellness program and implemented it at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, which is part of CommonSpirit Health. Virginia Mason Franciscan Health has facilities in northwest Washington. Now in place at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health’s St. Anne Hospital, the Postpartum Wellness and Recovery Program, or PWR, includes nurse navigation, health and wellness education, health monitoring, and care referrals for new moms who are vulnerable to the most dangerous postpartum diagnoses.
Currently, the program focuses on women identified to have hypertension or who screen for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. This summer, the program also will support women at risk for gestational diabetes.
“We’ve now created a safety net for when new moms leave the hospital,” Sapico says.
‘We have to do better’
Statistics show that the United States’ maternal mortality rate has more than doubled in the last two decades and is now
worse than for most other high-income countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that maternal mortality rates are significantly worse for Black women than for white, Hispanic and Asian women.
Sapico says statistics show that most cases of maternal morbidity and mortality that occur in the postpartum period are preventable.
“We have to do better in taking care of moms,” she says.
Capstone project
Sapico has been an obstetrician-gynecologist at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health since 2014.
Her work to get at the top causes of harm for new moms began in earnest when she was pursuing her master’s in organizational leadership at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, in 2021. As her capstone project, she came up with the idea for the program to identify women in danger of postpartum clinical and mental health concerns and provide them with in-depth
SSM Health’s Wisconsin hospitals give new moms alert bracelets to flag them as at-risk
At the start of this year, SSM Health hospitals in Wisconsin began providing new moms with post-birth alert bracelets to wear for at least six weeks.
These orange plastic bracelets visually identify new moms to medical teams. Knowing that a patient has recently given birth, medical personnel could quickly identify post-pregnancy complications such as a blood clot, hemorrhaging, sepsis or cardiomyopathy.
SSM Health has seven hospitals in Wisconsin. A clinical nurse specialist has been educating clinicians in those hospitals about the bracelet program and building awareness of the bracelets among local emergency medical services personnel and clinicians at area health care facilities.
SSM Health clinicians also are educating new moms about potential postpartum complications at 36-week prenatal visits and after delivery. The post-birth alert bands help reinforce that education and increase awareness of potential complications for patient and family recognition, in addition to alerting the health care team, according to information from SSM Health.
Use of post-birth bracelets started in Florida in 2023 and is spreading nation-
wide. This is the first time the bracelets have been used in Wisconsin, according to a press release from SSM Health.
The health system is using the bracelets because there are many health conditions that can threaten a new mom’s life in the first few weeks after she has given birth. Michele Schiess, acute care and emergency services director for SSM Health in Monroe, Wisconsin, says in the release that “many postpartum deaths could be avoided if postpregnancy and delivery complications were considered earlier in emergencies. These bracelets could save lives by making emergency responders and clinicians aware of potential complications earlier in an emergency, leading to better care for women in this critical postpartum time.”
— JULIE MINDA
support. She launched the PWR program at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle and recently transitioned it to St. Anne. The program is in pilot phase. In time, Sapico plans to create a tool kit so that other CommonSpirit facilities can launch their own iterations.
Women do not have to be patients of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health facilities to take advantage of the PWR program, but most who do are.
Navigation
Sapico has been rolling the PWR program out in phases, with hypertension navigation first in 2023, and the perinatal mood and anxiety disorders navigation second in 2024. In July, she’ll add on navigation for gestational diabetes.
Building out the program has involved many steps, including garnering the support of leadership and clinicians, securing grant funding, hiring a full-time nurse navigator, and deepening connections and establishing referral relationships with clinicians. This includes both clinicians who can direct patients to PWR as well as those who can treat PWR clients.
As the program grows, Sapico hopes to add more staff, including perhaps a social worker or community health worker.
For hypertensive moms like Kathman, PWR’s fulltime perinatal nurse navigator Lacey Parsadmehr gets a referral and visits them before discharge. She talks with them about hypertension and its signs and symptoms, educates them on the basics of self-care and tells them about the benefits of PWR. Those who sign on to receive Parsadmehr’s no-cost services get a device so their blood pressure can be monitored remotely. They get check-ins for six weeks, a warm handoff to their primary care clinician and ongoing navigation services from Parsadmehr.
“ Imagine how much death can be prevented, and how much healthier our patients can be if we push for better outcomes. That’s what drives this work — we just want healthier outcomes.”
— Dr. Leizl Sapico
Grant funding sustains postpartum health program
The Postpartum Wellness and Recovery Program at St. Anne Hospital in Burien, Washington, relies primarily on grant funding from CommonSpirit Health’s Mission and Ministry Fund. That fund invests in new and innovative programming to address top needs identified in CommonSpirit Health facilities’ community health needs assessments.
St. Anne is receiving $305,156 over a three-year period. St. Anne is part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, which is part of CommonSpirit.
The hospital also received a $30,000 grant from the University of Washington for participation in the UW Medicaid Perinatal Mental Health program; a $20,000 grant from the American Heart Association for participating in the Postpartum Systems of Care Initiative; and a $5,000 grant from the Washington state Department of Health to provide blood pressure cuffs to patients. Other organizations also provided funding.
— JULIE MINDA
That navigation includes continual education on their condition, help using home health equipment, assistance scheduling follow-up appointments with doctors, support with any socioeconomic concerns, and other help for a year after the baby’s birth.
For women who screen at risk for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, Parsadmehr takes a similar approach but one tailored to mental health aid.
Lifesaving intervention
Key goals of the program are to prevent maternal mortality, improve maternal health outcomes, and reduce hospital readmissions of postpartum women. Sapico says while there are systems in place to gather data to measure these and other impacts of PWR and to prove its value, the program is too new to have solid evidence of its impacts yet. However, she and Parsadmehr say they already are seeing much anecdotal evidence of the benefits.
Sapico and Parsadmehr say patients have said PWR saved their lives.
Sapico says that mental health concerns are some of the most threatening conditions for new moms. PWR seeks to reduce the stigma around new moms’ mental health. This includes ensuring moms know, through PWR efforts, that it is OK to express that they are feeling anxious, depressed or overwhelmed — and to get help coping — at a time in their life when society may be saying they should only be feeling joy about their new baby.
Parsadmehr notes that in addition to addressing mental health concerns, PWR has provided much-needed assistance with financial and language barriers. She says these barriers can be extremely taxing for new moms, and PWR’s help with navigating social services and accessing translation services has been invaluable to those moms.
Sapico says often when a woman gives birth, so much attention is on the baby, and so much of the woman’s own time and energy is focused on the baby, that she can neglect her own health. PWR shifts attention back to the mom’s health, and ensures that she is seen and heard. Parsadmehr says she loves that she and Sapico are educating patients, helping them make life choices that will have a lasting benefit, and encouraging them to advocate for themselves.
Sapico says, “Imagine how much death can be prevented, and how much healthier our patients can be if we push for better outcomes. That’s what drives this work — we just want healthier outcomes.” jminda@chausa.org
Ashley Kathman with her daughter, Camille; her son, Brooks; and her boyfriend, David Kaminski. Kathman credits her healthy postpartum experience after Camille’s birth to the Postpartum Wellness and Recovery Program at St. Anne Hospital in Burien, Washington.
Sapico
Parsadmehr
Chief academic officers
From page 1
have been adding a new role to their executive suites: chief academic officer.
While the particulars of the role vary by system, in general, chief academic officers are responsible for making sure their health system and its educational partners have the right infrastructure and programming in place to prepare students well for the health care jobs of the future. These leaders seek to ensure that there is a full pipeline of job candidates who are equipped to meet these systems’ strategic goals. They also help make sure that continuing education and professional development are available to their staff.
“We are asking, ‘Is our learner plan lining up with our operational plan?’” said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, chief academic officer at Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. “We need to produce a workforce that meets our needs. We need to bring our hospitals’ patient care goals to the start of our learner plans.”
‘A product of where you train’
O’Neal started as the system’s first CAO in August. She most recently was chief medical officer of FMOLHS’s Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, and she has been on the faculty of Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center since 2009.
She said it was E. J. Kuiper’s idea to create the CAO role at FMOLHS. Prior to becoming FMOLHS’s president and CEO in February 2024, Kuiper was a regional CEO at CommonSpirit Health, which has multiple academic medical centers and a CAO to help ensure that those facilities function cohesively within the system. Based on his experience at CommonSpirit, he knew the value of having an executive responsible for making sure that educational programs and curricula align with the system’s strategic goals.
O’Neal interfaces with leaders of FMOLHS’s academic medical center and its 10 hospitals to create “learner plans” for using their internal educational resources and their partnerships with all types of educational facilities — universities, colleges, trade schools and others — to achieve their strategic goals. They find ways to bolster local educational offerings, making sure the offerings are in line with medical best practices and standards.
Because “you are a product of where you train,” O’Neal said, FMOLHS wants to make sure the training available in its markets is exemplary. She said there is a lot of cross-pollination of students between educational institutions and the practicum
environment of the FMOLHS hospitals. Students who do rotations in a particular hospital often then pursue employment there, so she’s monitoring how well such experiences are going, and whether students see those locations as good places to work.
O’Neal also seeks to partner with educational institutions in FMOLHS markets to ensure they are well-staffed, a very vexing problem, given faculty shortages nationwide. The health system and education partners also look to make sure that teachers are fully equipped, both in terms of their own credentials and in terms of the technology available for teaching, such as simulation environments. In some cases, she helps determine how FMOLHS can best make its clinicians available as preceptors and adjunct faculty, despite their busy schedules.
The metrics of success for her work have to do with whether FMOLHS is getting the best graduates as job candidates, recruiting skilled talent, keeping existing staff welltrained and retaining its workers.
‘Physician leadership at the top’
Among the multiple CAOs employed at subsystems of Ascension is Dr. Christopher Trabue, CAO for Nashville, Tennesseebased Ascension Saint Thomas, chair of the department of clinical medical education for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and leader of the Saint Thomas Research Institute. He’s been at Ascension Saint Thomas since his 2002 internal medicine residency. Just before becoming CAO last summer, he directed Ascension
Saint Thomas’ residency program.
Ascension Saint Thomas has 16 hospitals in middle Tennessee. In the past, the system partnered with Nashville’s Vanderbilt University on physician education, but after the two organizations’ trajectories diverged, Ascension Saint Thomas partnered with the University of Tennessee on a graduate medical education program focused on internal medicine. Trabue said Ascension Saint Thomas created the CAO role in 2018 because it realized after establishing the partnership that it “needed physician leadership at the top” of the residency and GME programs.
Trabue’s primary focus is ensuring that the Ascension Saint Thomas — UT program has the infrastructure and faculty in place to provide comprehensive training that complies with GME regulations. Ultimately, the goal is to train future physicians for middle Tennessee.
Trabue said GME is concerningly underfunded, and it is difficult to find practicing clinicians at Ascension Saint Thomas to serve as practicum faculty, so he spends much of his time ensuring stable funding and staffing.
Chief concerns include maintaining the quality of the program and communicating with the residents and faculty on their satisfaction with it. Also, there is great competition for physicians in Saint Thomas’ market, and it is difficult to attract internal medicine residents to hard-to-fill primary care practices. Trabue said Ascension Saint Thomas hopes the quality of its program will convince residents to stay with Ascension Saint Thomas and work in pri-
mary care when they go into practice.
“It is hard to recruit physicians, and we fall back on our ideals and our purpose,” Trabue said, noting that the Catholic health mission is very attractive to young physicians.
Trabue measures his success in terms of physician recruitment and retention and how well Saint Thomas physicians rate on quality-of-care metrics.
‘How do we come together?’
When Dr. Nana Coleman became the first senior vice president for academic affairs and CAO of CommonSpirit in 2022, she had more than a dozen years of experience. CommonSpirit, which has 137 hospitals and a vast outpatient network spanning 24 states, has several academic partnerships including with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, and Phoenix; as well as several other collaborative relationships.
In fact, many CommonSpirit hospitals are engaged in academic initiatives, including sponsorship of graduate medical education and research.
Coleman oversees this work in her role. When asked what it takes to make this work successful, Coleman said, “It has to do with systems thinking. It has to do with how can we be intentional in how we support and help our facilities and their partners to look at opportunities to realize their potential. It’s a continual dialogue. It’s about how we support these programs to attract the highest quality candidates. It’s about how do we come together as one system?”
From a practical standpoint, Coleman’s work includes ensuring strategic priorities are in place and that the academic programs across CommonSpirit’s footprint line up with those priorities. She also makes sure the programs are in line with best practice standards, that they collect and use data and metrics to guide their work, that the people leading the programs are innovative and have a growth mindset, and that the learners are fully engaged and able to achieve their goals.
As with the Ascension and FMOLHS CAOs, provider recruitment, retention and development are top of mind for Coleman. And, she said, “all the efforts must prepare our learners and trainees to deliver the highest quality care possible.”
As a learning health system, Coleman said, “CommonSpirit’s biggest opportunity and the most exciting one is how we are leveraging the breadth and depth of our system to advance quality and excellence.” jminda@chausa.org
O’Neal
Coleman
Education programs provide training to staff at Ascension Saint Thomas in Tennessee. The subsidiary of Ascension has a chief academic officer who oversees its graduate medical education and residency programs.
Cancer center director with SSM Health copes with own breast cancer diagnosis
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Nikki Robinson has many roles with SSM Health in Oklahoma. She’s the director of the cancer center and director of breast imaging at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital — Shawnee. She’s the director of radiation oncology at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital — Oklahoma City. She’s also a breast cancer survivor.
When some co-workers expressed surprise that someone in oncology would get her own cancer diagnosis, she would note: “Cancer doesn’t care where I work.”
Robinson, 50, had a family history of breast cancer and knew the importance of self-exams and regular mammograms. Still, her own diagnosis after a routine mammogram in February 2024 hit hard.
“Everything I thought I knew about breast cancer kind of went out the window,” she said. “My brain kind of turned to mush, because you start getting overwhelmed.”
A biopsy determined that a 1.6-centimeter mass in her left breast was an invasive ductal carcinoma. Because she had dense
‘A beautiful story’: Collaboration helps Indonesian burn patients heal and flourish
By NANCY FOWLER
Last December, as temperatures hovered in the 40s, two Indonesian patients arrived at a Dignity Health — Memorial Hospital in Bakersfield, California, in shorts and flip-flops. Fortunately, appropriate clothing was waiting — one of many details arranged for the pair, who flew more than 13,000 miles to undergo life-changing surgeries at the hospital’s Grossman Burn Center.
Their arrival followed weeks of preparation. Beginning last fall, representatives from the hospital, the Grossman Burn Foundation and the medical campus’s Bakersfield Ronald McDonald House with the support of U.S. Rep. Vince Fong developed a plan to cover the needs of the patients, a young man named Tison and a young woman named Suci. (The hospital is withholding last names and exact ages for privacy.)
From clothes to food to caregiver coordination to translators to matters of cultural sensitivity, no concern was left unaddressed, according to Ken Keller, Memorial Hospital president and CEO. The hospital is part of the CommonSpirit Health system.
“It was a herculean effort,” Keller says. “Thanks to the willingness of everyone to
breast tissue, she went for an MRI, which found another 10-centimeter mass. The masses were deep, undetectable on a selfexam. The cancer was stage one, caught early. But she was still distressed and full of questions: Would she need radiation? Would she need chemotherapy? Would her hair fall out? Would she die?
“Then it really made me start thinking: This is what our patients go through,” she said.
Navigating treatment
Robinson, who is married with two young adult daughters, a young adult stepdaughter and two teenage stepdaughters, wanted to stay strong for her family and for her staff. “That was a little bit tricky for me, because you don’t want to show weakness, but you also need to show weakness, because that makes you human,” she said.
She credits her nurse navigator, Hannah Savage, with helping her understand the ins and outs of appointments and possible treatments. She says her medical oncologist in Oklahoma City, Dr. Thy Nguyen with SSM Health Medical Group, “was phenomenal.”
“One of the first things she said to me,
was, ‘How are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I’m fine, I’m good. It’s early stages.’” She said, ‘No, how are you doing?’ And I just started crying. I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m doing.’”
As a precaution, she decided to have a double mastectomy, which she had in March 2024 by SSM Health surgeon Dr. Stephanie Taylor.
In order to have breast reconstruction surgery, Robinson needed to lose weight. Her reconstructive surgeon put her on a prolonged fasting plan, and as of mid-May she had lost more than 100 pounds. She had the reconstruction surgery in February.
Robinson said she has had “the best outcome possible” since her diagnosis. She didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation, and now she takes a hormone blocker. And losing weight and exercising has helped her feel fantastic, she said.
Helping others
In the end, going through breast cancer treatment changed her life for the better, she said.
“I love my life. I love my family. I love my job. I love my co-workers, but once I got diagnosed, it really made me sit down and
come together quickly, we were able to get it done.”
The Grossman Burn Center has a long history of caring for visiting international patients. Doctors also travel to different parts of the world to care for burn victims.
Medical director Dr. Peter Grossman, son of the burn center’s founder, Dr. A. Richard Grossman, first saw Tison, then 6, in Indonesia over a decade ago. A kerosene lamp explosion left the boy with severe burns. While the care Tison received from Grossman and others saved his life, he was left with significant scarring.
“He used to get beat up a lot and made fun of,” Grossman says.
Grossman learned last year that the skin grafts on Tison’s legs had developed chronic infections. Tison was in danger of losing one of them. The news came soon after the Grossman Burn Foundation heard about Suci, who at 16 suffered major burns on her chest and arms while cooking. She was living with severe contractures, or
evaluate. I need to change,” she said. “I look at my life differently now.”
Robinson successfully advocated to get a nurse navigator at the hospital in Shawnee, a position the hospital plans to fill soon. She also happily shares her story with patients or anyone who wants a reassuring voice.
Just before having the reconstructive surgery, she appeared in social media videos for SSM Health advertising an annual “Pink Out” basketball game sponsored by SSM Health in Shawnee to promote breast cancer awareness.
“Early detection saved my life. Please schedule your mammogram today,” she says in the video.
Stepping out onto the court at the basketball game with other survivors or people undergoing treatment as the crowd applauded felt tough in 2024, right after her diagnosis.
She felt better at the game this year.
“It was great. You just felt so much love and community support,” she said. “But it was like, I’m supposed to be the one clapping for these people. They’re not supposed to be clapping for me.”
vhahn@chausa.org
says. “And how to ensure we always have a female caregiver present.”
Transportation was another issue. How would Suci and Tison get from the Ronald McDonald House to the hospital and burn center? It was decided security officers would drive them back and forth in a golf cart.
“It has been a beautiful story of everybody ensuring they get what they needed,” Harker says.
‘Makes your heart happy’
Burn injuries like Tison’s and Suci’s are not unusual in remote areas of Indonesia. Kerosene is used in lamps and often in cooking. Even if patients survive, the resulting disfigurement is emotionally traumatizing, Grossman says.
shortened tissues, of the hands, face, neck and chest, unable to feed herself or easily close her mouth.
“Her face was basically tethered to her chest,” Grossman says.
It was decided Tison would fly to Bakersfield for treatment along with Suci, who also brought her mom.
Tison speaks English and doesn’t need a translator. He even assists with Suci’s communication.
The young man is a joy to be around, an enthusiastic guitar player who’s quick to laugh, Grossman says.
“While a lot of people would have become withdrawn after what he went through, Tison developed the most magnanimous personality — he’s charming, he’s funny, he’s outgoing, he’s engaging,” Grossman says. “He’s one of those people that, when you meet him, you can’t help but like him.”
Settling in
Getting Suci and Tison settled was the first order of business. The Kern County (California) Asian Chamber of Commerce helped the hospital cafeteria with planning foods familiar to the pair and locating local residents of Indonesian descent for them to socialize with.
Respect for Indonesian culture and Suci’s Muslim religion was paramount. For her, modesty was an important consideration, says Katy Harker, Grossman Burn Center director.
“We talked about how we could have a hospital gown with long sleeves, and pants,” Harker
Suci arrived in Bakersfield nervous and apprehensive, he says. Following three surgeries, her capabilities and appearance are much improved. She can move her neck left and right. It’s easier for her to eat. Grossman notices her laughing and teasing with Tison and her mom.
“She can smile where she really couldn’t before,” Grossman says. “And I think she can look in the mirror with a sense of hope.” Tison’s right leg is completely healed. He will have further surgeries on his left. Suci also faces more surgeries before returning home. “But already the difference is remarkable,” Grossman says.
Grossman gives credit to the Bakersfield community for their successful visit.
“I’m just a mechanic,” the surgeon says. “The hard work is done by those who give of their time and services, and get them through tough, emotional times.”
Grossman says the goal is improving patients’ quality of life.
“The main thing is to make them feel better about themselves, to feel more independent, more confident,” he says. “And then I imagine they’ll find a way to help somebody else, to pass that forward.”
Harker says being able to help Tison and Suci gives her a warm feeling.
“They’ve come a really long way, and we get to take care of them; it’s really a special and wonderful thing to be a part of,” Harker says. “Everything we do here fills your cup and makes your heart happy.”
Suci’s and Tison’s stays in Bakersfield are expected to continue into July.
The efforts that went — and continue to go — into their care illustrate the hospital’s eagerness to provide excellent care, Keller says.
“And that translates into what we do for all our patients,” he says.
Tison and Suci arrived at Dignity Health — Memorial Hospital with scarring and injuries due to severe burns they suffered in separate incidents years earlier in Indonesia.
Harker
Robinson
Dr. Peter Grossman, left, medical director of the Grossman Burn Center, stands with Suci, Tison and Ken Keller, president and CEO of Dignity Health — Memorial Hospital in Bakersfield, California.
