Health System CMO Shares Keys to High-Performance Success

Hendricks Regional Health has gained recognition in a community survey, Newsweek's best hospital list, and Healthgrades awards.

Hendricks Regional Health has posted impressive results on several performance metrics.

In a biannual community survey, 80% of respondents said the Danville, Indiana-based health system is an essential care provider. Hendricks ranked 337 on the U.S. hospitals list in Newsweek's World's Best Hospitals 2025, with particularly high scores for patient satisfaction and quality metrics. The health system has received an Outstanding Patient Experience Award from Healthgrades for 17 years in a row.

In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Ryan Van Donselaar, DO, CMO of Hendricks, shared the keys to the health system's success.

Patient engagement at Hendricks is multifaceted, according to Van Donselaar. As the community grows, the health system is prioritizing expanding access to care.

"Our primary care base has grown in the past couple of years, as have our specialists," Van Donselaar says. "We have added technology to connect with our patients through the electronic medical record. We are trying to grow virtual visits and online scheduling."

In other efforts to boost access, Hendricks has been hiring nurse practitioners and physician assistants as well as adding service lines, Van Donselaar says.

Ryan Van Donselaar, DO, is CMO of Hendricks Regional Health. Photo courtesy of Hendricks Regional Health.

Managing population health

Hendricks has invested in promoting population health.

"We are blessed to have an executive director of population health," Van Donselaar says. "When you think about managing a population of people, it is easier to do inside your own four walls when patients are getting care. We leverage our EMR to manage data."

Hendricks has invested in a third-party platform that allows the health system to track where patients are going when they are receiving care from other organizations.

"Once we get that data, we can work with our partners in the community such as skilled nursing facilities and home healthcare companies to improve the care that patients are getting even though they are not within our four walls," Van Donselaar says.

A Hendricks vice president and the health system's transitions of care team meets regularly with these community partners. To Van Donselaar, the process of establishing collaborative relationships with community partners takes years.

"If we do not have a relationship with one of the community providers, the first thing to do is to call them and talk to someone such as the nursing director about what they desire, which is usually patient referrals," Van Donselaar says. "From there, you can start to talk about patient care and grow the relationship from ground zero."

Boosting patient satisfaction and patient experience

Patient satisfaction is a byproduct of high-quality care, according to Van Donselaar.

"You cannot have patient satisfaction without great clinical care. That is the primary focus," Van Donselaar says. "Beyond great clinical care, you must empower your staff to help patients fix a problem in the moment or escalate the problem to leadership so we can take care of it."

It is a team effort.

"From the CEO down, we have worked on pulling together teams to talk about the importance of patient satisfaction, quality, and patient experience," Van Donselaar says. "In the moment, our staff can impact the patient's subjective feelings and their care."

Similarly, the cornerstones of patient experience include access, safety, and quality, but there is another level to achieving a positive patient experience, Van Donselaar explains.

"You need to realize that anywhere the patient interacts with the health system such as phone calls and the billing office requires standardization and education on how to work with patients," Van Donselaar says. "If you provide great clinical care, then the patient is discharged and has a negative experience with the billing office, one phone call can ruin the whole experience."

To standardize interactions with patients, Hendricks has an executive responsible for systems excellence who looks across the entire health system and provides education on interacting with patients.

"We also have directors for different patient areas who educate staff members about simple things such as responding to voice mail and answering a phone call," Van Donselaar says. "That education is distributed to all office coordinators."