Conscience protection at risk 2 Keeping kids safe 3 Executive changes 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
DECEMBER 1, 2023 VOLUME 39, NUMBER 19
‘Democratizing’ tech: Providence digital leader talks benefits, pitfalls of AI By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
NEW FRIENDSHIPS EASE LONELINESS
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Ruth Vaill, left, and her friend Cathy Johnston share a love of nature. The two were paired up through Mercy Care for the Adirondacks, a nonprofit in northeastern New York state that helps elders ward off isolation and loneliness.
I’m an outdoor person and I really needed to get out in the natural world. And Cathy likes the natural world, too, so we started out walking, and for me it saved my life.” — Ruth Vaill
Through volunteer program, Mercy Care for the Adirondacks addresses isolation among elders By LORI ROSE
When Ruth Vaill needed to move to a new city to be closer to family after her husband died, she left not only her home of 40 years but also her circle of friends, most of her belongings, and all that was familiar to her.
The move from her longtime home in New Hampshire to Lake Placid, New York, was difficult but coupled with the COVID lockdown that occurred shortly after she arrived, Vaill found herself reeling from both a loss of independence and from loneliness. “I had suffered many losses sort of all at once,” said Vaill, who is 87 and lives with vision loss from macular degeneration. “I was in pretty bad shape emotionally. It was very discouraging, and I really fell into a dark place. I needed some kind of a lifeline.” Continued on 8
Cambodian Americans Unifying as a tax district enables Cedar Rapids get culturally sensitive hospitals, neighbors to boost the community care, support at St. Mary By JULIE MINDA
A program that Southern California’s Dignity Health — St. Mary Medical Center launched in the late 1980s to help new Cambodian arrivals access health care has evolved significantly over the ensuing four decades. It now helps thousands of firstgeneration immigrants and their descendants with a range of needs. The first iteration of the Southeast Asian Project that St. Mary and its foundresses established focused on aiding refugees who had fled to the U.S. amid the Cambodian genocide that started in the late 1970s. Those immigrants got help understanding how to care for their health and how to navigate an unfamiliar health system. Over the years, St. Mary has evolved the program, which the hospital renamed Families in Good Health, to meet the emerging needs of the large Cambodian-American population in Long Beach.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When the three major health care players here joined the city of Cedar Rapids around 2011 to back the creation of a self-taxing medical tax district, they were saying to property owners that it would be worthwhile to pay an added tax because it would spur the type of local improvement that no one organization could achieve on its own. About a decade since the establishment of the MedQuarter Regional Medical District, those providers say it has enabled the 55-block quadrant of Cedar Rapids to achieve a significant level of community and economic development. Dr. Timothy Quinn is president and CEO of Mercy Cedar Rapids. He Quinn says the district is and will continue to be “something greater than what it was before.”
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By JULIE MINDA
Sara Vaezy is in the problem-solving business. She and the Providence Digital Innovation Group she leads build technology to make it easier for people to get healthier and for clinicians to do their jobs better. Vaezy is executive vice president and chief strategy and digital officer at Providence St. Joseph Health. She was a CHA Tomorrow’s Leaders honoree in 2019. Vaezy The Providence Digital Innovation Group has incubated multiple companies for spin off. This October, it announced its fourth one, Praia Health, which adopts the digital flywheel concept used by Starbucks, Amazon, Netflix and others that captures various measures of customer use and employs algorithms Continued on 7
Digesters at Ascension hospitals keep food waste out of landfills By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
In the kitchens of 69 Ascension hospitals, churning, stainless steel food waste digesters are doing their part to help the planet. Food and nutrition associates feed the digesters leftovers and the scraps made while preparing foods — pineapple tops, apple cores, potato peelings, and, to a lesser extent, chicken bones and meat trimmings. “We have learned over time that digesters are happier if they are vegetarian,” said Lois Sechrist, Sechrist the manager of sustainability at Ascension and Medxcel, a facilities management subsidiary. As of early November, the digesters had kept more than 704 tons of waste out of landfills. That’s important because food waste is one of the largest emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas emitted from landfills. Continued on 6
The MedQuarter Regional Medical District has branded the entire 55-block area with signage.
> PeaceHealth hospital prioritizes preparing fresh foods on site, reducing waste. 6
2 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD December 1, 2023
By JULIE MINDA
Until recently there had been general agreement in the U.S. that clinicians could follow their conscience when it came to whether they provided certain health care services to patients, Catholic bioethicist John Hardt says. However, he sees a shift in public opinion Hardt happening, with more people believing services should be provided regardless of whether doing so violates clinicians’ consciences. Speaking in October during a CHA webinar, “Thinking About Conscience in a Divisive Time: Catholic Health Care, The Ends of Medicine, Moral Integrity and the Common Good,” Hardt said this opinion trend could have a growing impact on clinicians’ ability to act on their moral convictions and the ministry’s ability to practice in line with Catholic teaching. Hardt said “there is a tribal environment now” in which some people cannot tolerate those they disagree with — they see people with beliefs that differ from their own as bad. Such thinking causes many people to oppose the use of certain conscience protections by clinicians, he said. Hardt is associate professor of bioethics and vice dean of professional formation for Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago.
Acting morally Hardt began the webinar by explaining that conscience has to do with the belief that people should act morally and that people can and should judge whether and how certain actions will affect their integrity. Hardt said conscience “unifies us as moral persons,” since all people are striving to act in harmony with their own understanding and beliefs. He noted that Catholic tradition holds that Catholics have an obligation to form their consciences properly, including by drawing upon the moral teachings and traditions of the church.
John Hardt said that since conscience is imperfect and individually developed, disagreements will arise when different people or different groups are applying their moral beliefs to a topic. Tolerance is necessary to accommodate these competing viewpoints, he said. Since a person’s conscience and moral judgments can be based on missing or misunderstood information, Hardt said those beliefs can be wrong. Therefore, he said, a proper understanding and application of conscience requires a moral humility, or acknowledgment that one’s beliefs could be incorrect. He noted that institutions may have a conscience — they may profess a set of moral commitments, they may make moral judgments and they will be critiqued by others accordingly. He explained that the Catholic health ministry makes moral commitments including in the form of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.
Tolerating disagreement Hardt said that since conscience is imperfect and individually developed, disagreements will arise when different people or different groups are applying their moral beliefs to a topic. Tolerance is necessary to accommodate these competing viewpoints, he said. But he contended that tolerance is diminishing in the U.S. today. He said that in the current cultural moment, issues like abortion and health care services for people in the LGBTQ+ community are hotly contested and there are some people who come to hate those they disagree with. He said it’s important to recognize “we can disagree and still love one another.” Compelling action Hardt said the key question that arises around such contested topics, when it comes to the medical field, concerns whether clinicians are obligated to provide health care services that are legally sanctioned but that they oppose on moral grounds. He said in his view society should exhaust all other avenues before it resorts to compelling clinicians and health care facilities to provide services they oppose. He said that is because medicine is a complex system requiring complex knowledge and expertise, and there must be space in such a system for providers to use their discretion and to make values-based judgments. Hardt said that to evaluate the validity of conscience protections, one must come to an understanding of what medicine should be: Is it merely a service industry that must fulfill patient wishes, whatever they may be? Or is it based on the application of clinician knowledge and judgment to determine the best approach for the patient’s well-being? He said many moral questions surround the concept of medicine as a service industry including when it comes to the prescription of growth hormone for normally statured children, the use of the stimulant Ritalin to improve kids’ performance on tests in school, the use of hormonal therapy for youth who are questioning their gender identity, the use of abortion for sex selection, the use of euthanasia for the dying and the use of elective surgery for solely cosmetic purposes. Providing alternatives He noted that many considerations are at play as society draws the boundaries of conscience protection. For instance, when clinicians invoke conscience protection, are they doing so in a selective and discriminatory way? Are they doing so to avoid being complicit in behavior they deem to be morally wrong? What is the level of harm if they do not provide the service? To what degree does the clinician’s refusal to provide a service amount to total service denial, due to a patient’s geographic or financial limitations? Hardt said it is important for society to ask what other alternatives could be used, to avoid compelling clinicians to provide services that go against their convictions. He said it is incumbent upon government agencies to ensure there are other ways for individuals to get the health care services they need — outside of forcing physicians to violate their consciences. He said that these areas of contention are becoming increasingly challenging for society to navigate. “There is no easy way forward, and especially if we are not willing to engage in dialogue,” Hardt said. “We have to agree to disagree while figuring out how to meet the needs.” jminda@chausa.org
Dan Z. Johnson/@CHA
Polarized society is asking if clinicians should still get conscience protection, says bioethicist
Msgr. Charles J. Fahey speaks during the Catholic Health Assembly in 2012. He was honored that year with CHA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his advocacy work on behalf of the elderly.
Msgr. Fahey, champion of the elderly, dies at 90 Msgr. Charles J. Fahey, who helped open nursing homes and served on presidential councils as part of his lifelong advocacy for the frail elderly, has died. Msgr. Fahey passed away Nov. 5 at his home at Nottingham Independent Living in Jamesville, New York. He was 90. In 2012, CHA honored Msgr. Fahey with its Lifetime Achievement Award. As assistant director and later director of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Syracuse, he helped open five diocesan nursing homes and create the Christopher Community, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Catholic Charities that developed specialized housing for the elderly and disabled. Msgr. Fahey was a charter member of the Federal Council on Aging and served during the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy
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Carter. He chaired that group as well as the National Council on Aging, the American Society on Aging, the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging and Catholic Charities USA. He served on the National Commission for Quality in Long Term Care and helped lead the White House Conferences on Aging in 1971, 1981 and 1995. Msgr. Fahey represented the Holy See at the 1982 World Assembly on Aging; he was the U.S. delegate to the United Nations Second World Assembly on Aging in 2002. He served on the CHA board and the boards of numerous health systems and charities, including ArchCare, the Continuing Care Community of the Archdiocese of New York. The funeral Mass for Msgr. Fahey was celebrated Nov. 10 in Liverpool, New York.
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December 1, 2023 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD 3
Safe Kids coalitions endeavor to keep kids out of ERs Austin’s coalition, led by Dell Children’s Medical Center, has spent 30 years promoting child safety
Unintentional injury deaths Injuries are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S. The types of injuries vary by age. Suffocation deaths are most common among infants less than 1 year old.
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Stewart Williams and Raven Hood have a pretty good idea of why kids come into the emergency room at Ascension’s Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas. The pair talk with ER doctors. They see the statistics. Their job is to help keep kids from needing the emergency room in the first place, and that often involves educating the public. Williams is an injury Hood prevention manager and Hood is an injury prevention coordinator with Safe Kids Austin, which is led by Dell Children’s. It is a coalition within Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit that works to help families and communities keep kids from getting injured. “It’s the major severe injuries that we’re trying to mitigate, so they’re just an injury that needs a Band-Aid,” says Williams. “That’s our goal — to turn something that could be life-threatening or life-changing into something that’s nothing more than a scratch.” Preventable injuries are the leading cause of death of kids in the United States, with 8,000 children dying because of a preventable injury in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Travis County, Texas, where Austin is located, accidental injuries were the leading cause of death in the years 20152019 for anyone up to age 44, with motor vehicle crashes at fault for the majority of those deaths, according to the Austin Public Health Department. Sleep-related injuries are the leading cause of deaths among infants age 1 month to 1 year, with most due to accidental suffocation from an unsafe sleep environment.
Surprising injury causes While much of the coalition’s time is spent mitigating these common injuries or causes of death — it often hosts car seat safety checks and educates parents about safe sleep practices — some issues come as a surprise. Take, for example, ceiling fan injuries. Emergency room doctors at Dell Children’s reported they saw children coming in with lacerations or depressed skull fractures from hitting the blades of a ceiling fan. Children were playing on bunk beds and getting hit, or parents were roughhousing and throwing their kids into the air. The low ceilings of some Austin houses added to the issue, says Williams. Through a partnership Safe Kids Austin has with a local TV station, Williams appeared on a regular safety segment and talked about ceiling fan safety.
Drowning deaths are most common among children ages 1-4. Motor vehicle crash deaths are most common among ages 5-19. Child injury death rates decreased 11% from 2010 to 2019. However, rates increased among these groups:
50%
Poisoning and drug overdose death rates among Hispanic children
37%
Poisoning and drug overdose death rates among Black children
21%
Suffocation death rates among Black children
9%
Motor vehicle death rates among Black children
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010-2019
Or take counterfeit car seats. Based on their training and exposure, Williams and Hood can easily spot seats that don’t meet U.S. safety standards and may be made of cheap or shoddy materials. The injury prevention program at the hospital sometimes gives away safe car seats. But on a broader scale, Safe Kids Worldwide is working with Amazon to eliminate the sale of counterfeit seats among independent sellers on the platform, says Hood. Or take the potential dangers of water bottle caps. The hospital medical director approached Williams and said doctors had removed the small white caps from several kids’ throats or stomachs. Safe Kids Austin then did a television segment on the issue. “There’s an analogy of upstreamdownstream thinking,” says Williams, who has worked in child safety for 20 years. “We can spend all day pulling kids out of the water, but that doesn’t change the problem. We need to go upstream and see why they are falling into the water in the first place. That’s the concept.”
A national effort Safe Kids Worldwide was co-founded in 1988 by Dr. Marty Eichelberger and public relations consultant Herta Feely of the Children’s National Hospital in Washington. Since its founding, the U.S. childhood death rate from unintentional injury has decreased by 61%, according to the organization. Safe Kids Worldwide works with a network of more than 400 coalitions in the United States and has partners in more than 30 countries. Of those, about 45% are affiliated with a hospital or health system, about a quarter with local public health agencies, and the rest with local police and fire departments or nonprofit groups, says Daphne Greenlee, senior network manager for Safe Kids Worldwide. “We look for a really strong agency that wants to take the lead but also bring the partners along to make sure that they’re addressing those injuries in their community,” she says. “So it can look very different
Stewart Williams, an injury prevention manager with Safe Kids Austin, led by Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin, Texas, appears on a local television program to talk about child passenger safety week. Safe Kids Austin partners with the station to do regular segments on child safety issues. Some ideas for the segments come from the injuries doctors see in the emergency room.
in central Texas than it might in rural Montana, or in metro Atlanta.” Dell Children’s is one of about 20 Catholic hospitals nationwide that lead a Safe Kids coalition. Others include Essentia Health — St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, Minnesota; Ascension Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita, Kansas; Franciscan Health Lafayette in Lafayette, Indiana; and Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa, California. Greenlee lauds Safe Kids Austin for its 30 years of work, and says it has a particularly strong trauma services team that focuses on injury prevention as a whole. Safe Kids Austin has its own board of directors and works closely with the national group. One of the pillars of its work is advocacy, which includes trying to head off legislation that is potentially harmful to children and promoting legislation that could help them. For years, Safe Kids coalitions in Texas fought against opponents of red-light cameras. “Ultimately, they won,” says Williams. “And immediately, we saw an increase in trauma data related to red-light running.” Conversely, the coalitions succeeded in helping to pass legislation that raised age limit or height requirements for booster seats. However, they ultimately lost a push to keep children in rear-facing seats up to age 2.
Creativity and challenges Hood and Williams say they’re given a great deal of autonomy to be creative in their work so they can tackle new challenges. Safe Kids Austin partnered with drowning awareness groups Colin’s Hope and Live Like Cati to provide loaner life jackets at the area’s public parks. They partnered with Dell Children’s to open a children’s safety center inside the hospital that sells car seats, bicycle helmets, safe sleep items, and other products. While they’re given that creativity, they also have the responsibility to base what they do on best practices and research, which is why they rely on partners and the national group for support. Their work is often a balance between educating an individual versus changing the situation for a larger population, Williams and Hood say. “Parents are so busy — it blows my mind,” says Hood, who came to Safe Kids Austin earlier this year after working in the adult injury prevention field. She’s not a parent herself, so she tries to see things from a parent’s perspective. She says some parents have to be reminded to sit back and assess a situation, such as making sure a five-point harness on a car seat is properly secured. “Most parents want to do the best for their child,” says Hood. “They’re trying their hardest to do everything they can to keep their child safe. That’s first and foremost. We are here to help and support them in any way we can.” vhahn@chausa.org
IN BRIEF Saint Francis psychiatric hospital breaks ground on expansion Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, part of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Saint Francis Health System, broke ground Nov. 7 on a $70 million expansion that will add 60 new beds for acute behavioral health care. Laureate, in Tulsa, now has 45 acute psychiatric beds, 30 senior behavioral health beds and 15 inpatient beds for people with eating disorders. The expansion will also add a crisis center for people who need more care than an outpatient visit can provide but less than an inpatient hospital stay. “Severe, untreated mental illness is a key driver of poverty, violence, homelessness and incarceration,” Ken Moore, president of Laureate, said in a statement. “Being able to provide treatment can prevent some of those problems.” The project, which includes about 87,000 square feet of new and renovated clinical space, is expected to be completed in 2025. Chelsea Hospital to invest $10M to expand inpatient rehabilitation Chelsea Hospital in Chelsea, Michigan, has approved a $10 million capital investment to expand the hospital’s adult inpatient rehabilitation unit. Under the plan, Chelsea Hospital’s joint venture partner, University of Michigan Health, will consolidate its adult acute rehabilitation services into one location inside Chelsea Hospital. U-M Health providers will staff the unit. The new rehab unit is expected to open in summer 2024. Chelsea Hospital President Ben Miles said consolidating and expanding rehabilitation services “will allow us to offer a more unified, less fragmented approach to providing compassionate, high-quality care.” The expansion will build upon work begun in 2020, when Chelsea Hospital grew its inpatient rehabilitation unit from six to 24 beds. The new expansion will add 16 more beds. The unit treats patients recovering from stroke, brain injury, neurological disease or illness and issues involving orthopedics or trauma. Spinal cord injury and cancer programs also will move from U-M Health to Chelsea Hospital. Chelsea Hospital is a joint venture of Trinity Health Michigan and U-M Health. Mercy Health, RIP Medical Debt partner to relieve patient debt Mercy Health and RIP Medical Debt have partnered on an effort to help alleviate more than $7 million in medical debt for nearly 5,000 patients in northwest Ohio. RIP is a national nonprofit that uses government allocations and donated funds to purchase people’s medical debt. Mercy Health patients whose income is four times or more below the federal poverty level or whose debt is 5% or more of their annual income qualified for the debt abolishment. RIP took ownership of qualified patients’ past due accounts and is abolishing their debts. Recipients will have no tax liability for the canceled debt. Relief is only available to those accounts that qualify; other patients cannot request it. The debt abolishment was funded by the Toledo, Ohio, City Council and the Lucas County, Ohio, Commissioners. They allocated funds to RIP Medical Debt specifically to purchase such debt from hospitals, health systems, and collection agencies at a discounted rate. Bob Baxter, president, Mercy Health — Toledo, said, “With the support of our local elected officials, our patients are relieved of the financial and emotional burden related to debt and Mercy Health is able to recover a portion of that debt to ensure that we can continue to provide our community with high-quality, compassionate care.” Mercy is part of Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health.
4 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD December 1, 2023
CHA adds session on environmental stewardship to leadership program CHA is adding a session on stewarding the gift of creation to its Foundations of Catholic Health Care Leadership Program. Darren Henson, CHA’s senior director of ministry formation, said the topic is one CHA had wanted to add even before Pope Francis issued his recent exhortation, Laudate Deum, calling for swift action on climate change. Henson “So many of our member organizations have an eye towards strategies on reducing carbon footprints and on other major initiatives committing to the care of all creation,” he said. Henson joined CHA over the summer and is leading the Foundations program for the first time, along with Lori AshmoreRuppel, CHA’s director of sponsor services.
Foundations of Catholic Health Care Leadership Program Registration is $295 or $590 per person for CHA members depending on membership type and $1,180 per person for non-CHA members.
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In addition to the new session topic, the session on Catholic social tradition is being presented earlier in the program than it has before since so many of the other topics build upon it, Henson said. Registration is open for the program. The orientation is Jan. 30 and the sessions run 1-3:30 p.m. ET Thursdays through March 21. CHA has tailored the sessions to execu-
tives, sponsor and board members, physicians, nurses, clinical staff, pastoral care staff, and anyone else interested in learning more about the theological and ethical principles that are at the core of the Catholic health care ministry. “Foundations is a very long-standing, highly valued program,” said Henson. Other topics that will be discussed during the program’s eight sessions include: Leadership in Catholic health care. Spirituality, prayer and reflection. Community benefit. Global health. Ethics and the Catholic moral tradition. Clinical dimensions of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. Stewarding the ministry’s culture and
identity. Models of the church: spirit and structure. Sponsorship. Integration, discernment and human flourishing. Human flourishing and continuing the formation journey. Participants will be asked to read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch videos to prepare for each session. Faculty for the different sessions includes CHA leaders. “People have an appreciation for reflecting deeply on their own gifts, talents and values and having the opportunity to integrate them into their role in service to their ministries,” said Henson. “They really begin to see the spark that happens when they bring together who they are with what it is that we do.”
Families in Good Health Families in Good Health now includes free home visits and support for expectant and new parents, parenting workshops, community wellness programs, benefit enrollment help, oral health care access, vision help, teen mentorship and programming around California’s Stop the Hate initiative. That initiative focuses on addressing a rise in anti-Asian hate. Most of the services are grant-funded and free to clients. More than 8,000 people receive services from Families in Good Health annually. Sr. Celeste Trahan leads the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston, the congregation that founded St. Mary. “What was begun 35-plus years ago still continues today because people are Sr. Trahan still in need,” she said. “Every generation has its own challenges. But whatever those challenges are, St. Mary, as a Catholic hospital, is about addressing the needs of those vulnerable people. “That’s who we’re called to serve,” she said.
‘Lots of misunderstandings’ The United Cambodian Community, a partner of St. Mary, is a cultural and social support organization serving people of Cambodian descent in Long Beach. Its website says the mass immigration of 300,000 Cambodians to the U.S. began after the genocide that took place in the Southeast Asian country between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge communist regime killed over 2 million Cambodians during that time. Many of those who fled to the U.S. settled in Cambodia Town, which the United Cambodian Community says has the largest population of people of Cambodian descent outside of the Southeast Asian country. Sr. Trahan said, “They came to Long Beach en masse, and their needs were
Long Beach Post
From page 1
Revelers take part in the 15th annual Cambodia Town Parade in Long Beach, California, in April. The event’s theme was “Stop hate with love,” a call to end violence and bias against Asian people. Dignity Health — St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach serves members of the Cambodian community through its Families in Good Health program.
great. There were lots of misunderstandings of health care. And many people (from that immigrant community) feared going to health care facilities” in part because they had been through much trauma and feared institutions like hospitals.
An outpouring of help Rev. Stanley Kim is director of mission integration for St. Mary, which is part of CommonSpirit Health. He explained that when Long Beach-area leaders saw the plight of the Cambodian refugees — most of whom couldn’t speak English, had no Western education, Rev. Kim no job, few resources and few skills — they marshaled resources for an “outpouring of help.” St. Mary was part of this response. The Sisters of Charity and St. Mary leadership developed navigation services so that these community members could get the care they needed in a culturally appropriate way and in the Khmer language that many of them spoke. The programming, initiated in 1987, originally was called Southeast Asian Project and was later renamed Families in Good Health. As more community members became
Families in Good Health’s Educated Men with Meaningful Messages, or EM3, hosts an annual Leadership Camping Retreat. This EM3 group is at the August retreat at YMCA Camp Oakes in Big Bear, California. Families in Good Health is offered by Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California.
adept at using those navigation services and their circumstances improved, St. Mary broadened the program’s purview to cover emerging needs. It began offering English language classes, other connections to education, and prenatal care and parenting services. These services now include Welcome Baby programming funded by First 5 Los Angeles, a home visitation and education service for expectant and new parents. It covers infant development, nutrition, breastfeeding, health insurance, home safety and postpartum care for moms. Families in Good Health also offers a Healthy Families America home visitation program for older children in which a family support specialist visits them to address their social service needs. Families in Good Health also has free parenting workshops, including on communicating, understanding feelings, disciplining children, handling stress and anger and building children’s self-worth. Families also get access to dental and eye care and help accessing Medicaid, Medicare and other health insurance programs. Over time, Families in Good Health has expanded its programming beyond Cambodian Americans to other vulnerable populations. While Families in Good Health’s staff of about four dozen provides many of these services at its offices on St. Mary’s campus, they provide some in the community. For instance, they visit high-traffic areas of Cambodia Town and other communities where there is a concentration of vulnerable people or they make home visits. Many staff members are of Cambodian descent; some speak the Khmer language.
Understanding identity Ladine Chan has been program manager of Families in Good Health since 2020. His parents were Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities, though their two daughters died of starvation. Chan was born in a Thailand refugee camp in 1980 before his family emigrated to Arizona in 1982 to live with a sponsor family.
The Chans moved to Long Beach in 1983. Chan said that like many children of Cambodian refugees, he struggled to understand his identity growing up. He said his parents were traumatized by what they experienced before they left Southeast Asia. They did not want to talk about those Chan experiences and only wanted to focus on the present and future. This left Chan feeling unmoored and disconnected from his family’s past. “I didn’t understand what it meant to be Cambodian,” he said. He said when he was in high school, he learned from friends about the EM3 program that the United Cambodian Community and Families in Good Health had started in 1996. EM3 is short for Educated Men with Meaningful Messages. EM3 offers health education, mentoring, career guidance, cultural activities, engagement, leadership training, outreach and advocacy to community members ages 14 to 19. EM3 is particularly designed for at-risk, multiethnic young men. There are year-round activities to choose from, including a camping retreat each summer. Chan said participating in EM3 throughout high school helped him understand his and his family’s history and how it shaped them. Chan gained so much from the program that after earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology, he wanted to use his skills to benefit EM3. He became an intern and then a youth organizer with EM3 before becoming Families in Good Health’s program manager.
Building bonds Chan said through EM3 and the many other programs under the Families in Good Health umbrella, St. Mary is reaching out and doing the long, hard work it takes to gain trust within the Cambodian immigrant community and other vulnerable communities of greater Los Angeles. He said St. Mary is constantly building relationships with churches, temples and other organizations in the immigrant communities in its service area. He said that has made it an integrated part of Cambodia Town and the surrounding area. He said the programming that St. Mary has developed at Families in Good Health has helped Cambodian Americans get important skills and education, establish businesses, gain stability and then advocate for and build up their community. He noted that 90% of participants of EM3 graduate from high school and go on to higher education. Many EM3 participants have been empowered to speak out at community forums, such as on how to address gun violence, housing instability and education shortfalls. “It’s helping them to have a voice,” Chan said. jminda@chausa.org
Josh Booth /Diamond Label
December 1, 2023 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD 5
This street next to Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa is one of the many that are undergoing construction for better navigability and safety as part of improvements spearheaded by the MedQuarter Regional Medical District. Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa, Mercy Cedar Rapids and UnityPoint Health — St. Luke’s Hospital are Cedar Rapids’ three major health care providers, and all three support the MedQ.
Medical tax district From page 1
He says in the past in the district, “it was complicated to get around. Now it is easier. We’ve enhanced and highlighted the main thoroughfares. Now, there is clearer navigation and wayfinding. There are visible improvements, safer crosswalks, and more people are out walking.” Michelle Niermann was UnityPoint Health — Cedar Rapids president and CEO from 2019 until this summer, when she became chief Niermann operating officer for the UnityPoint Health East Division. The changes in the district, she says, have been “transformative. It looks fantastic and it’s wonderful to have this portion of the city look that way, it enhances people’s confidence and comfort being here.”
Lifting all boats Phil Wasta is a Cedar Rapids native and executive director since 2015 of MedQuarter, also known as MedQ. He says the district came about as a result of a 2007 city master plan to build upon the success of a self-supporting municipal improve- Wasta ment district, or SSMID, that led to significant enhancements in downtown Cedar Rapids several years prior. Iowa state law allows for the creation of these defined areas within a city, where properties are assessed an added tax to fund community improvements. While a devastating 2008 flood delayed the city’s work on advocating for a SSMID for the medical community, the next year city leaders began to solicit that support from Cedar Rapids’ three major health care providers and the businesses that would be taxed to support the district. The three are the 424-bed Mercy, the 532-bed UnityPoint Health — St. Luke’s Hospital — Cedar Rapids, and the Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa specialty care network. Gaining business owners’ buy-in was difficult because it meant a tax hike, says Wasta, who then co-owned a business within the proposed district. But he and other proposal backers successfully rallied businesses and others behind the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” he says. In 2011, the city council approved the MedQ. Niermann, who is a 30-year resident of Cedar Rapids, says the MedQ came about in large part because of the strong vision and focus on collaboration of the executives who headed Mercy and St. Luke’s. Mercy’s top executive at the time was Tim Charles,
COMPOSITION OF THE MEDQUARTER Located in the MedQuarter district in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are: Mercy Medical Center, a 424-bed, stand-alone facility with an emergency room, women’s center, birthplace, NICU, pediatrics facility, cancer center, heart center, outpatient clinics and other facilities. UnityPoint Health — St. Luke’s Hospital, a 532-bed hospital that has an emergency room, neurosurgery facility, surgery center, women’s and children’s health center and other facilities. It is part of the UnityPoint network that has 20 regional hospitals, 19 community hospitals and over 400 clinics and home care services across the Midwest. Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa medical pavilion, which is one of Iowa’s largest private, multispecialty physician groups. It has more than 90 physicians, surgeons, and mid-level providers offering services in a wide range of specialties and subspecialties. Multiple other health and wellness providers, including pharmacies, medical and dental equipment and supplies companies, dental providers, eye care providers and nursing homes. Some of these are part of Mercy or St. Luke’s. Cultural attractions, including a fire department museum, a history center and a studio. Chapels at each hospital and three churches. More than a dozen nonprofit organizations, some of them associated with Mercy and St. Luke’s. This includes a genealogical society, a mental health services provider and a harm reduction coalition. About a dozen eateries, including coffeehouses, a pub, a bakery, fast food and several ethnic restaurants. More than a half dozen stores, including an antiques shop, a market, a general store and an art store. Nearly two dozen service providers, including financial advisers, a bank, attorneys, and real estate and property management firms.
in the district are more than 50 other stores, restaurants and offices; multiple churches and civic organizations; and some residential properties. Only the for-profit businesses are taxed — the rate of the MedQ added tax varies annually but currently is $2.75 per $1,000 of assessed value of property. While the hospitals are nonprofit, they have agreed to an annual voluntary contribution of $100,000 apiece. The latest annual budget of the MedQ was $570,000. A 12-member commission governs the MedQ. That commission includes top executives of the three anchor health care providers, as well as leaders of other medical facilities and businesses in the district. The uses of MedQ’s revenue include incentivizing investment in the area, building awareness regionally of the district as a recognized medical destination, coordinating the collaboration of the medical providers, promoting workforce development, bolstering the surrounding community, improving the area’s safety and security, beautifying the area, and supporting local businesses and organizations.
Planters and paint Some of the most visible evidence of the MedQ’s work is the ubiquitous branded street signs and wayfinding posts. Also, the MedQ has worked hand in hand with the city to beef up and enforce building codes that promote an appealing aesthetic districtwide. And MedQ and the city are working together to redesign and in some cases rebuild the major thoroughfares of the district. For instance, 10th Street, which runs from Mercy, past Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa to St. Luke’s, was designed to include new turning lanes and to have pedestrian crosswalks where people used to just run across the street like they were playing the video game Frogger, says Wasta. MedQ worked
with the city to bury electrical wires and to replace wooden light posts with metal ones. MedQ installed and maintains flower planters in the district, and set out new trash receptacles, including solar-powered compactors that ping workers when they are full. MedQ purchased small tracts of land to create several “pocket parks,” or small green spaces with landscaping and places to sit and enjoy nature. MedQ offers grants to businesses and others for façade improvements. Numerous restaurants within the district have gotten a facelift, as did a museum in a historic home. MedQ also has been developing promotional brochures, a website and other marketing materials. And it has been organizing and promoting events to engage employees of the medical facilities and community businesses.
A ‘unicorn’ Michelle Jensen is a MedQ commission member and a former MedQ chair. She is president and CEO of CarePro Health Services, a group of businesses providing home care. CarePro is based in the district. She and Wasta Jensen say that the Cedar Rapids MedQ is somewhat of a “unicorn.” They say there are many tax improvement districts for civic purposes — like the Cedar Rapids downtown SSMID and a Czech Village New Bohemia SSMID formed in Cedar Rapids after the MedQ. And, there are improvement blocs centered around stand-alone medical facilities, such as at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. But they know of no district like MedQ that is anchored by a group of competing health care providers and that is self-funded. Being a unicorn presents challenges, say Jensen and Wasta, in that there are no established protocols to follow. For instance, while the downtown SSMID is aiming to attract new large businesses and cultivate an active social scene, MedQ does not have enough vacant property to attract big companies, and its base of clinician employees does not have much time outside of work to socialize in the MedQ. But, say Jensen and Wasta, the collaborative spirit engendered by the MedQ has had many benefits. For instance, they believe it eased communications and cooperation among providers in their response to COVID and in their recovery from a 2020 derecho — a severe, destructive windstorm. A MedQ brochure says there has been tens of millions of dollars of new development, many new businesses locating there and an increase in the taxable value of the district. Niermann says such improvements are helping the district’s “big three” employers to take on what is the most pressing challenge of the day in health care — worker recruitment and retention. She says the changes made through the medical district “make it an attractor for the people who come here for care, the people who work here and the people who live here.” jminda@chausa.org
and UnityPoint Health — Cedar Rapids’ was Ted Townsend.
Medical destination The MedQ includes the two hospitals, the stand-alone specialty clinic and some independent health care facilities. More than 500 physicians, surgeons, dentists, optometrists and mid-level providers and thousands of additional staff work at those facilities. Also
MedQ representatives staff a booth at the Cedar Rapids Downtown Farmers Market in July. MedQ seeks to have a presence at community activities to boost its profile.
6 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD December 1, 2023
Food digesters
Reducing waste, on-site food prep are priorities for PeaceHealth Southwest hospital
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“Ascension has a large focus on creating healthier communities, making sure we have a positive impact where we’re located,” said Bridget Randazzo, a sustainability analyst for Ascension and Medxcel. “So that’s also contributing to our mission as well as serving those that maybe live by a landfill.”
Waste diversion Sechrist said that “as a faith-based health system, Ascension has a responsibility to care for the Earth. That’s baked into our mission statement.” The digester program got started in 2021, when a workgroup within Ascension’s Environmental Impact and Sustainability program realized that about 15% of the waste Ascension sent to landfills was from food. They set a goal by fiscal year 2023 to reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills by 6%. They thought the low-hanging fruit — in some cases literally — could be food scraps. The system installed food digesters in the kitchens at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida, and Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore. At the end of three months, the digesters had diverted 32 tons of scraps from the landfill and converted it to gray water, which is the generally clean wastewater that comes from household machines like dishwashers and washing machines. The system then figured out which hospital kitchens had the space for a digester, and which hospitals produced enough waste to make a larger step toward its goal. By the end of July 2022, it had installed 69 digesters in hospitals across the system. Intermittent feedings Ascension uses digesters that come in four sizes. The smallest ones can digest up to 15 pounds of food waste an hour; the largest ones can digest up to 100 pounds an hour. They look a little like boxy ice machines. Workers place the scraps in the digester, and about once a month pour a bottle of microorganisms into the machine. Paddles inside the digester stir and agitate the scraps and microorganisms, the microorganisms digest the scraps, and the resulting gray water is discharged to wastewater treatment plants. “You kind of have to feed it slowly,” said Sechrist. “That’s another good analogy — if
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Chase Turgeon, a food and nutrition services associate at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida, adds scraps to a food digester in the hospital's kitchen. The digester is one of 69 installed in kitchens at Ascension hospitals.
you dump it in all at once, you’re going to have an upset stomach. You want to do it a little bit through the day.”
Valuable metrics Randazzo said installing the food digesters came with a learning curve for everyone, because it added a step in the process for kitchen associates and Medxcel, which maintains the machines. The communications team developed posters and quick reference guides with QR Randazzo codes that hang above the digesters to provide information to staff. Each digester gives an hourly report of how much waste it is taking in and how much it is producing. Integrating that data with the hospital’s information technology network was an added step, said Sechrist. “Adding data tracking provides valuable information that we didn’t fully anticipate,” she said. The food digesters helped kick-start St. Louis-based Ascension’s bid to reach big goals: the system is striving to achieve net zero carbon emissions and zero waste by 2040. Randazzo said Ascension knew it could scale up the digesters throughout the whole system and the machines had been proven to work in various industries for more than 20 years.
Sechrist pointed out that the digesters also help with worker safety because workers are no longer hauling big barrels of food waste to the loading dock every day.
Portion control Ascension’s food and nutrition services supplier, TouchPoint Support Services, also has programs in place to help reduce food waste. One teaches workers how to prep food to minimize waste, such as how to trim a melon or a roast to get the most food from the item. Workers also arrange food in coolers and on shelves so that the oldest gets used first. Each worker has their own prep station with a scale or bucket to keep track of how much waste they produce. Dieticians and food staff also work to serve the right food portions in order to reduce leftovers and waste. Last winter, the Ascension Environmental Impact and Sustainability team made 17 site visits to talk to food service teams and ask about what’s working and what’s not working. Ascension is “creating ownership and making it part of their work and training so staff understand that this is important, because food service staff has a lot of turnover,” Sechrist said. “We have to engage those associates and include them to listen to their concerns.” vhahn@chausa.org
Mercy partners on continuum of care campus in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Mercy Medical Center of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, together with Presbyterian Homes & Services of Roseville, Minnesota, has opened a continuum of care campus called HallMar Village. The $96 million facility includes independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing care and memory care. The campus is about 8 miles from the long-term care facility that it replaced. The legacy site was at Mercy Medical Center in downtown Cedar Rapids; the new site is in the suburbs. Unlike the legacy facility, the new campus is a joint venture with PHS. It has much more capacity, offers more levels of care and has numerous amenities that were unavailable at the spacerestricted medical campus site. Tawnya Salsbery, Mercy Medical Center executive director of post-acute and senior services, says HallMar’s rooms are designed to enable residents to age in place. She says Mercy and PHS designed the facility to look and feel residential, not institutional. The partners also used design elements that promote socialization and engagement. Mercy and PHS developed the facility and its programming based on the Eden Alternative Seven Domains of Well-Being. Those domains are identity, connectedness, security, autonomy, meaning, growth and joy. HallMar residents have access to a Village Center with a restaurant and bistro, salon and spa, chapel, health and wellness center, conservatory, library, art studio, theater,
Mercy Medical Center of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has partnered with Presbyterian Homes & Services of Roseville, Minnesota, to open a continuum of care campus in Cedar Rapids’ suburbs. With the color scheme, construction materials and furniture, developers sought to establish a residential feel.
community room, woodworking shop, golf simulator and club lounge. Residents also can enjoy patios, gardening space and walking trails that will connect to the neighborhoods that surround HallMar. Salsbery says analyses of the Cedar Rapids eldercare market had shown that the community lacked sufficient options for all
levels of care, but particularly for memory care. HallMar aims to help fill that gap. HallMar is connected to the Chris & Suzy DeWolf Family Innovation Center for Aging & Dementia, a Mercy facility that opened earlier this year. It provides programming and services for people with dementia and their caregivers.
A couple times a week, nurse Brent Cheney carts the food scraps produced in the kitchen at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center — mostly seeds, rinds and peelings — to his family’s farm for the pigs, goats and chickens there to enjoy. “He takes about 13 tons a year away from us,” said Brian Nelson, sustainability programs manager for PeaceHealth Southwest. That food waste giveaway is just one of the ways the Vancouver, Washington, hospital Nelson is reducing its carbon footprint and piloting sustainability programs for other facilities in the PeaceHealth system. To curtail the amount of food left on the trays, the hospital assigns a “unit host” trained in hospital dietary needs. The host helps patients make healthy and reasonable choices and might suggest things like an egg or yogurt for a high-protein meal. The hosts usually work four days in a row, so they get to know patients’ preferences. “Sort of the ulterior motive to that is if you’re going to order something that you want, you’re less likely to waste it,” said Nelson. The hospital also offers plant-based options for patient meals and in its cafeteria. It doesn’t go out of its way to label anything vegan or vegetarian, simply because that may deter some people from choosing it. PeaceHealth Southwest is part of Cool Food, an initiative of the World Resources Institute that helps food service companies, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, cities and universities reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions. The hospital has taken the Cool Food Pledge, a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the food it serves by 25% by 2030. Among other Catholic systems or hospitals that have taken the pledge are Providence Saint Joseph Health and CommonSpirit Health’s Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. Last year, PeaceHealth Southwest started using a food waste digester, which has diverted more than 23 tons of food waste in almost a year. In a related effort to cut waste, the hospital provides reusable containers for staff and visitors who want to pick up food from the cafeteria. People then bring back the containers to collection machines on campus. Amy Jansen, the hospital’s director of food and nutrition, noted that all the meals served at the hospital are made in-house and with produce from local distributors. “We do get compliments on the quality of the food pretty frequently,” she said. Nelson pointed out that PeaceHealth Southwest tries to offer good food as well as be a good steward of the planet. “We try not to be the ‘hospital food people,’” said Nelson. “Certainly, we try to use it as an opportunity to give people healthy food and try to make a difference on the environmental side at the same time.” vhahn@chausa.org
December March1, 1,2023 2022 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD 7
IN BRIEF CHA president, board chair visit Vatican for discussions Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM, CHA president and CEO, and Damond Boatwright, CHA board chair and president and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System, visited the Vatican in November for several meetings related to Catholic health care. Among the gatherings they attended during their time in Rome were those of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; and the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. They also met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Ambassador Joseph Donnelly. Sr. Mary is a member of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic joins anti-violence collaboration Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic and The Lincoln Center for Family and Youth have formed a collaboration to implement the Violence Intervention and Prevention Program. The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency has provided a $2.5 million grant for the program. The violence prevention initiative recently started at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pennsylvania, and will expand to Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia and
KEEPING UP
Krebs
PRESIDENT/CEO Shantel Krebs to regional president and CEO of Avera St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota. She has been interim regional president and CEO since March, following the medical leave and death of Dr. Mikel Holland. A meeting of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life brought together, from left, Fr. Krzysztof Gierat, CMF; Sr. Rosemary Rese, PSDP; Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM, CHA president and CEO; Damond Boatwright, president and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System and chair of the CHA board; and Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz, prefect of the dicastery.
St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. The program provides resources to those affected by violence, reducing traumatic stress and involvement in future violence and creating safer communities. It attempts to do so by breaking the cycle of violence.
Holy Name renovates, reopens residential hospice in New Jersey Holy Name health system has reopened its newly renovated Villa Marie Claire residential hospice in Saddle River, New Jersey.
The 26-acre property features remodeled all-private patient suites, a chapel, a library and dining room, horse stables, a swimming pool, and an outdoor pavilion for entertaining guests, overnight accommodations for loved ones, and a playroom for children. “Villa Marie Claire patients will now receive end-of-life care in a sanctuary-like setting that combines state-of-the-art medical facilities with functional homelike living spaces, allowing patients to fully celebrate life with family and friends,” Holy Name said in a release.
Digital technology
What are you all working on right now? We’ve been making investments that enable the use of artificial intelligence for over eight years, however, the technology itself is a lot more powerful now. It uses deep learning and neural networks, which are essentially like the computer science equivalent of a human brain. About 10 years ago, the advancements in the technology resulted in the performance of artificial intelligence models in controlled settings to be greater than that of a human. The example is one of these AI generative models passing the United States Medical Licensing Examinations. Now, that doesn’t mean that they can deliver care in a real-life setting, but it does mean that they can answer questions in a pretty robust way. One of the things I get the most excited about is this notion of democratizing the
ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES Ray Anderson to executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Trinity Health of Livonia, Michigan. Dale Steakley to vice president, chief operating officer and chief nurse executive, Dignity Health Woodland Memorial Hospital in California. The facility is part of CommonSpirit Health. Angela Kelly to executive director of operations for HSHS St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital in Effingham, Illinois.
ANNIVERSARIES Mercy Health — Tiffin Hospital in Ohio, 110 years. Mercy Health — St. Charles Hospital in Oregon, Ohio, 70 years.
needs to get done for the patient. We’re really leaning into assisting (clinicians) and augmenting (their work), so that we can enhance the quality of that compassionate experience.
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based on that information to enhance their experience. The Praia Health platform connects people to services, products and resources, such as scheduling, medical records, exercise and education programs, and virtual visits. For a patient who uses the platform to set up a doctor’s appointment and then learns in that appointment that he or she has high cholesterol, the app might suggest simple workouts and options for lab appointments. The platform launched within Providence in January 2022 and supports more than 3 million user accounts. In 2022, it delivered more than $20 million in measurable value back to Providence, the system says. The Providence Digital Innovation Group is in the process of rolling out the technology to a select group of health systems and other partners. Vaezy’s role also includes assuring a strategic approach to the promise of artificial intelligence, or AI, in health care. Catholic Health World talked to Vaezy about the widening use of digital technology in health care. Her responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Kelly
The Providence Digital Innovation Group says it works "to deliver more simple, accessible and equitable health care" and channels its efforts into various focus areas.
usage of technology for the average health system user. Historically, if we wanted to do predictive scheduling, we would partner with some big vendor or our own data scientists. What we’ll soon be able to do, because of the foundations we have in place plus these new technologies, is enable your average business user to actually build what we call applications, so that they can get their job done in a much more efficient, effective way. The power can multiply. That’s how we’re seeing it from a foundational impact perspective. We bring together innovation and compassion. We are leaning in very heavily on this because it helps us deliver on our mission and bring innovation to delivering on our mission, and doing so in a way that will be sustainable into the future. Where does the person and the compassion come in? What we’re able to do is take the stuff where that personal touch isn’t needed and get it off the plate of the people that need to do the work and need to be there for their patients. You’ve probably been to the doctor, and you might notice they sit there and chart on their computer. In some cases, they’re not even looking at you because they must do the documentation. And by the way, they also take more documenta-
tion home with them. They’re doing things at nighttime in bed — they call it pajama time. And that’s contributing to burnout, and it’s contributing to a lot of difficulty for our clinicians. One of the things that we can do now is deploy ambient technology that listens to that patient conversation in the setting of that visit, so the doctor, the clinician, or the nurse practitioner can sit face to face and have a conversation with the patient. It can reduce burnout. We’re partnering with a company called Nuance, and they’re kind of the leader in voice-related technologies, and they’re spending a lot of time on this ambient space. Another example is that during COVID, the number of messages patients sent to clinicians expanded significantly. We’re tackling the in-basket problem in a couple of different ways. One is something we call message deflection, which is trying to help the patient before they even send a message. We have a chatbot that lives on our website and in our mobile app and in MyChart, and the chatbot will pop up and say, “How can I help you?” Sometimes patients still need to send the clinician an email or an in-basket message. We have another technology that is like an in-basket assistant for our clinicians, so that it reads the message as it comes, and it can help summarize the intent and what
Overall, how should people see these developments? Do we need to be careful? I think AI has the potential to be the best thing that’s happened to our patients and our providers in terms of a technology support for them. It has tremendous, tremendous potential and is very exciting. At the same time, we need to be very careful. There are lots of land mines out there in terms of potential issues with bias. We actually have a guardrails group that’s determining policies but also putting in place technical infrastructure to help contain the risks. What we need to do is test in a way that is fairly contained with a lot of mitigation built in so that we can learn and start to uncover the unknown unknowns. Otherwise, we’ll never get started and then we’ll be in deep trouble. Are you going to have critics that say computers are taking away people’s jobs? I oversee marketing in our system, and here is what I would say: marketers who use AI will replace marketers who do not use AI. But that doesn’t mean that marketers are going away. Our work just evolves. It changes over time, and it has to respond to the signs of the times. We don’t have telephone operators plugging telephone wires in like they used to back in the day either. We have cell towers, a different set of infrastructure. AI will be the creator of new types of work that are more value added to helping people. We shouldn’t have people just cutting and pasting data from one form to another. That’s something a computer can do. We have lots of valuable resources. Humans should be working on higher-order things. There’s a whole workforce training element to all of this as well, and we have to be very mindful of it. But that doesn’t mean we have to slow down in terms of trying to help people. vhahn@chausa.org
8 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD December 1, 2023
Friendship volunteers
exhibit at our art center. We seem to always find something to do.” The friendship is mutual, she said. “I truly believe you can never have too many friends, so having another friend is great.”
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Thankfully, she said, her niece recommended Mercy Care for the Adirondacks, a nonprofit whose mission is to help elders throughout this rural, mountainous region ward off feelings of isolation and loneliness by pairing them with friendship volunteers. Mercy Care matched Vaill with volunteer Cathy Johnston, 70, and the two hit it off beautifully. Since their first meeting in May 2022, Vaill and Johnston have become walking partners who get together twice a week to discuss nature, books and art, often while strolling along country roads or parkland paths. “I’m an outdoor person and I really needed to get out in the natural world,” Vaill said. “And Cathy likes the natural world, too, so we started out walking, and for me it saved my life. Cathy is a wonderful, open person, and she never makes me feel like I’m an elder. She’s never condescending, and we just talk like we are friends, because we are friends.”
Isolation among seniors Love of God and love of neighbor inspired the Sisters of Mercy to sponsor the establishment of Mercy Care for the Adirondacks in 2007. Mercy Care’s mission to enhance the fullness of life for elders living in their community evolved from discussions with community leaders and others in New York state’s Adirondack TriLakes Region of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake. The discussions were about the growing issues of isolation and loneliness among elders and how to meet their needs to help them more successfully age in place. Studies show that social isolation and loneliness can deeply impact quality of life for older adults and that their physical, emotional and mental health are directly affected. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated Beal the problem, said Donna Beal, executive director of Mercy Care. She pointed to a recent advisory released by the U.S. surgeon general warning that people lacking social connections in their lives can have an increased risk for premature death comparable to if they smoked daily. “People are starting to understand there are real health consequences,” Beal said. “Loneliness and isolation hurt whole communities, as well as individuals.” A history of caring The Sisters of Mercy first came to the rugged Adirondacks more than 100 years ago to care for tuberculosis patients. In time, they established care centers in the region. When ownership of the nursing centers was transferred to Adirondack Medical Center in early 2007, leaders of the congregation began to consider what their new mission should be. “We looked around and said, ‘What are we going to do?’” recalled Sr. Mary Sr. O'Keefe Camillus O’Keefe, a founding board member of Mercy Care. “And we found out that there were a lot of people in the area that were lonely, that just needed somebody to talk to.” And so was born Mercy Care for the Adirondacks. Working with area churches and community organizations and social service agencies, families and physicians, Mercy Care painstakingly pairs elders and volunteers who have similar interests. There are no health, faith or income guidelines required, and all services are provided free of charge. Volunteers visit and call their partners, provide transportation to appointments, assist with grocery shopping and other errands, and help connect them with social services, all to help elders stay connected with their communities. “Yes, we do tasks, but it is really about
Shirley Clark is one of the people who have been matched with a volunteer companion through Mercy Cares for the Adirondacks. Clark says she “was very, very lonely” before she found out about Mercy Cares and was befriended by volunteer Margie Gallagher. “Really I believe in my heart that God sent me Margie and sort of paired us up together,” she adds.
making friends,” Beal said. “Just having another person in your life makes your life richer and fuller. It makes your heart feel good when you see the relationships and the joy that people get from being part of Mercy Care.”
Never too many friends For Johnston, nurturing a friendship with Vaill has been easy. “I love multigenerational activities,” she said. “I have friends that are 30, I have friends that are 45, and I have friends that are 80. You get so much out of it because you get all different perspectives.” Johnston also serves on the board of
Mercy Care. She said she was drawn to the organization after retiring as a business owner because she wanted to continue to serve her community in ways that were meaningful to her. And much like Vaill, she said, she wanted to be engaged, rather than simply entertained. “Ruth had never been to Lake Placid, so it’s easy to show her around,” Johnston said. “We both relate to the natural world, so she is the perfect walking companion. We stop and look at wildlife and plants and we use the Seek app on my phone to figure out what they are. When it gets bitter cold or is pouring rain, Ruth and I frequently do errands — like the library or visit the gallery
‘We’re all in this together’ Volunteers are key, Beal said. From an initial training class of 12, Mercy Care now boasts more than 100 volunteers who complete seven hours of training on topics such as nutrition, dementia, physical activity and spirituality. Mercy Care also hosts events where elders and volunteers socialize while doing something fun, like building a terrarium or enjoying a picnic lunch. Many of the volunteers are elders themselves who may one day be on the receiving end. “We call it the Circle of Mercy,” Beal said. “Everybody helps everybody at a certain point in life, but we’re all in this together.” That’s what makes the Mercy Care model, supported entirely by charitable contributions from individuals and private foundations, particularly ideal for rural areas like the Adirondacks. In the region, services are limited, the population is aging, and a growing number of families are economically challenged. That’s why one of Mercy Care’s goals is to help educate communities about health and aging. “It’s important to look at aging as a whole,” Beal said. “It’s not just one person at a time, but helping our communities to become age-friendly. We like to say, age friendly communities are good places for people to grow up and grow old.”
2024 2 24 2024 AWARDS
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
Celebrating Extraordinary Contributions to the Catholic Health Ministry
tomorrow’s leaders program Honoring young people who will guide our ministry in the future
NOMINATE AN EXCEPTIONAL PERSON OR PROGRAM TODAY!
sister concilia moran award
SUBMISSION DEADLINE
For demonstrated creativity and breakthrough thinking
lifetime achievement award
DEC. 15, 2023 For more information or to submit an entry, visit chausa.org/awardnominations
For a lifetime of contributions
achievement citation
For innovative programming that changes lives
sister carol keehan award For boldly championing society’s most vulnerable
ASSEMBLY 2024 SAN DIEGO JUNE 9 - 11 Plan now to attend Assembly 2024 to celebrate the recipients of these distinguished awards and our shared vision to Embrace Bold.