Attaining the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and being a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, Clements is no stranger to war. With more than 20 years of experience in providing emergency care, strategic planning, and new program development in both tertiary and small specialty hospitals, she has the background to lead her team in the battle against COVID-19. Join us as she discusses how her life experience has helped her adapt and guide her team on the front lines.
Before joining academia, Berrett spent two decades as a hospital CEO for some of the top healthcare systems in the country, including Sharp, Texas Health Resources and HCA. In today's uncertain times, many healthcare organizations need leaders to make definitive choices. Britt continues to urge healthcare leaders to work towards a mindset of collaboration and innovation. While it may not be easy, it is with trust and transparency that will put them on the path to success. Join us, as he explains how he empowers healthcare leaders to build their teams and build for the future.
Fostering the next generation of healthcare professionals is not an easy task, nor one that comes with detailed instructions. However, Nat'e's desire and passion to influence others—her team, and even her family—incites her to take action and lead by example. She needs no guidebook and shows true grit. Join us as she explains what drives her and how she impacts culture change.
COVID has been front and center for the majority of hospitals, underscoring the critical need for healthy communities. Ruth and her team have been working tirelessly to ensure care for vulnerable populations through streamlined access. Join us as Ruth explains how they look for COVID hotspots and partner with community organizations to reach at-risk groups for the pandemic.
President and CEO Roxanna Gapstur shares the health system's strategies on caring for rural and underserved populations in Pennsylvania during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Pennsylvania has over 99,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of July 20, across the state's 67 counties.
WellSpan Health serves a diverse group of communities across 5 counties in southeast Pennsylvania: Adams, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York Counties. They also serve one county in northern Maryland. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March, WellSpan has actively invested in taking care of its communities.
WellSpan Health President and CEO Roxanna Gapstur, PhD, RN, spoke with HealthLeaders about the importance of caring for their communities during the pandemic, which include underserved and rural populations.
"Our main message is just that we are a trusted partner for our community, that we're leading the way during the pandemic," Gapstur says. "We're just committed to our communities and being a catalyst in building both health equity and ensuring that our communities have the very best care."
This is part one of a two-part interview series. Part two will focus on WellSpan Health's strategic initiatives to serve the diverse communities in their care, including the Amish and Plain Community, Latinx, migrants, and homeless populations.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What has the COVID-19 pandemic looked like in WellSpan's hospitals and the communities you serve?
Dr. Roxanna Gapstur: It's been interesting across our five counties. In March, we saw higher levels of positive tests in our Eastern most counties—Lebanon and Lancaster, which are closer to Philadelphia and New York.
And then it slowly spread across our counties. I would say that we have not been in crisis, although we've had a very steady state of positive patients in our hospitals. We generally have a number of patients somewhere between 50 and 60 every day across our system.
HL: What short-term and long-term goals are you working toward to serve your community post-pandemic?
Gapstur: We have a few things that we're working on. We're looking at how do we develop plans for a better public health infrastructure in South Central Pennsylvania. We're working with our elected officials, government; as many people as are interested in developing that public health infrastructure and supporting policy changes that will help us have a better infrastructure for the future.
We're looking at creating contact tracing programs that can be reactivated as needed throughout the pandemic. And then, we're trying to develop more robust support for our long-term care facilities in our region. We've done a lot of work supporting long-term care throughout the last five months. We've had weekly calls, we've shared PPE and other supplies with our long-term care facilities, [and] we've given advice on infection control, but there does need to be robust support for those facilities going forward.
In the short term, in the public health area, we're looking at how can we do mobile testing in some of our communities. For instance, in the Plain Community, it would be helpful to be able to go to them and consider mobile testing options.
HL: Why is it important to focus on rural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic? And how does WellSpan Health lead in taking care of its surrounding rural communities?
Gapstur: Sometimes in rural areas we might lack some of the resources that urban areas have when it comes to healthcare. Also, if [COVID-19 safety protocol] messaging isn't as strong or as prevalent, the virus can spread and create more havoc. Many of our counties have rural areas where we are providing care. We would like to try and provide what we call 'local systems of care' where we've enhanced the support and the specialized services in our communities so people can get care close to home.
Another important reason to focus on rural communities is just to make sure that we're improving health outcomes in those communities at the same rate that we're doing so in the rest of our country. [WellSpan is] focused on providing things like transportation, housing, fresh food.
HL:Why is it important for hospitals and health systems to focus on social determinants of health and serving underserved populations?
Gapstur: We think everyone should have access to the best healthcare, and we believe that your healthcare shouldn't be determined by the zip code you live in.
What happens at the doctor's office, or the hospital, is only about 20% of what contributes to healthy outcomes. The other 80% is influenced by other factors that a lot of us have talked about—social determinants of health. Things like transportation, housing, fresh food, access to healthcare. We have some key priorities in the social determinants area in our organization, including food and housing.
We came right out early on in the pandemic with some strategies to help address social determinants and underserved populations.
Some of those things were: not charging for COVID-19 testing or treatment, … [and] making sure that we're addressing social, demographic, behavioral, and economic issues for our populations. We've also got some serious commitments and funding that our board has put behind that, as well as an endowment fund to ensure that we have consistent funding for social health risks in Central Pennsylvania.
HL: What are some of the financial investments WellSpan Health has made in terms of COVID-19 and taking care of your communities during the pandemic?
Gapstur: We [give out] community grants to organizations in our five-county area. One of the things that we realized as the pandemic was just hitting, was that organizations were going to need help supporting the people and the constituents that were coming to them. And so we started something called the Slow the Spread Grant, which was a great way for us to be able to fund short- and medium-term strategies that our community organizations needed to put in place as they were trying to help people.
It could have been food or housing; it could have been virtual care; it could have been medical, PPE, and those kinds of things. We tried to partner with community organizations to support them to support others.
WellSpan Health is an integrated health system with that serves the communities of central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland with more than 200 care locations, including eight hospitals. Pictured above are the following WellSpan hospitals (clockwise, from top left): WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, WellSpan Philhaven behavioral health hospital in Mt. Gretna, WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital, WellSpan York Hospital, WellSpan Chambersburg Hospital, WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital in York, WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital and WellSpan Waynesboro Hospital. Photo Credit: WellSpan Health
HealthLeaders Finance Editor Jack O'Brien speaks with Bradley Haws, MBA , CFO of UI Health Care in Iowa City, Iowa, about the importance of cost containment during the coronavirus pandemic and preserving capital in anticipation of a potential second wave.
HealthLeaders Revenue Cycle Editor Alexandra Pecci speaks with Chris Johnson, vice president of revenue cycle management for Atrium Health about its work to improve revenue cycle communications and its importance during the COVID-19 crisis.
Dr. Carladenise Edwards shares how she hopes to implement strategies for equitable, accessible care for the health system's diverse communities.
Healthcare disparities is an important topic at Michigan-based Henry Ford Health System, which has a research collaborative focused on "understanding both the mechanisms by which provider and patient-related factors contribute to health disparities and how health care systems can be the driving force in developing and implementing methods for their elimination."
Just last month, the health system announced it signed a letter of intent with Michigan State University to expand its current partnership to collaborate on healthcare disparities.
This focus is also important to Henry Ford's new Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Dr. Carladenise Edwards, who is passionate about providing equitable, accessible care to the diverse community the health system serves.
Edwards has worked in and out of the public sector on healthcare policy for almost 30 years. In her most recent role, she served as executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Providence St. Joseph Health. In the past, she's also served as chief strategy officer for Alameda Health System alongside Henry Ford Health System's current CEO Wright Lassiter III.
Edwards, who starts her new role with Henry Ford Health System on July 13, recently spoke to HealthLeaders about what she hopes to accomplish and how her education and career background helped prepare her for this role.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Carladenise Edwards, senior vice president, chief strategy officer, Henry Ford Health Systems (Photo courtesy of Henry Ford Health Systems)
HealthLeaders: What has your experience been working in healthcare leadership as a woman?
Carladenise Edwards: It can be challenging at times, particularly for me because of the role that I play. As a person who's been on the transactional side of healthcare, I am almost always the only female in the room in a negotiation, or when facilitating a strategy session with executives and board members; often the only person of color.
What it requires is to be on your A-game all the time. We have no choice, as women and people of color, other than to be exceptional. Often be ‘overqualified and credentialed,’ just to get your foot in the door. But then at the same time, we also have to be incredibly thoughtful about how we represent our gender and our race, and to be intentional about the relationships we build with a diverse group of people who can be supporters and advocates for us in our work. That often includes men, and white men, and building strong relationships and allies is so important to being successful.
It's a challenge at times, but I don't think it's insurmountable. I do find there are times where women want to retreat and I say "don't retreat; don't retreat, don't quit. Get back in there. Keep going." Because I'm cheering everyone on, and I am managing my female colleagues up, and I'm trying to create opportunities for them and the next generation of women that's behind us.
HL: What is your healthcare background and what inspired you to work in healthcare as a leader?
Edwards: I'm actually an epidemiologist. I studied medical sociology at the University of Florida, which is where I got my PhD. And then I [finished] two additional certifications: one in neuroscience at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the other one in life course development at UCLA.
My intention was to be in the policy arena to understand, and then appreciate, how politics, economics, and the environment influence health and well-being, and what kind of policies need to be put in place so that we can eliminate the disparities that exist between us.
It was my thesis that those disparities were not innate based on biology, but they were based on all these external factors. So that was what I thought I was going to do when I grew up; I was going to be an academic and do research that influenced policy and push for agendas that would change the trajectory in the life course for primarily people of color. Then I got tapped to work in Washington D.C as a Presidential Management Intern to work on healthcare policy specifically focused on mental health and aging.
From there, [my journey] just weaved up, down, and all around.
I've been in and out of government doing policy work. I've been in and out of the private sector doing strategy and business development for both technology companies and healthcare companies that wanted to implement new ways of managing and delivering care. Then I've been in the delivery system. My work has always been around health in life course development.
What's exciting about Henry Ford is that I get to do all of that. It's a not-for-profit organization that's well-positioned to influence policy because of their reputation and the way in which the Fords influence our economy and government. It's also an opportunity to do some real strategy around community health and how care is delivered in such a diverse community, from Detroit all the way up in Ann Arbor; from Lansing and across.
I'm excited because I find that I'm in a place that I can actually do a little bit of everything based on all the skills that I've acquired over the course of my career. I'm an academic as well, so they have academic affiliations, a strong research institute, and they recruit some of the brightest scientists and physicians and clinicians around the world. I'm giddy just thinking about it.
HL: What are you most excited for with your new role as senior vice president and chief strategy officer of Henry Ford Health System?
Edwards: The first thing that comes to mind is the word "innovation." It's being in an organization that is committed to discovering and implementing new ways of delivering care, addressing healthcare inequity, and trying to eliminate disparities and outcomes. Being in an organization that is committed to doing things in new ways, which is the history of the organization, is what has me excited.
The other thing is the people. CEO Lassiter, [who] I have had the benefit of working with in the past, is just an incredible leader. Kind, just, integrous, and fully committed to success into excellence. He's inspired by helping people be their best selves, so, the leadership team is a reflection of that.
HL: With starting this new position during the COVID pandemic, how has that affected the interview process?
Edwards: Well, if it weren't for COVID, it's likely I wouldn't be making this transition. I'm fortunate and blessed that an opportunity to do what I do, and love, became available at this time. It's a blessing and a curse for me. The curse being that the department that I ran at Providence [St. Joseph Health] was eliminated because of COVID-related budget constraints. But then a new opportunity presented itself at Henry Ford, an organization that believes that strategy is imperative to helping them figure out how to get through the implications of COVID. And then you just add on top of that the civil unrest, which makes it even more critical that we are sensitive, empathetic, and action oriented around coming out of COVID and through COVID in a way that doesn't further disenfranchise and disadvantage the poor and the vulnerable.
HL: What are some short-term strategic initiatives you're looking forward to implement related to the pandemic?
Edwards: One of the things that I strongly believe is that the outcomes we want to achieve have to be clearly defined based on the circumstances. From there, you identify the right strategies and approaches to get to those outcomes. I'm coming into an organization that's grounded, mature, and has achieved a certain level of excellence, and so for me, my starting date is finding out where we are now, what are the goals that the organization has put forth pre-COVID and now since we've experienced COVID. Then, how do we go about implementing the right strategies to achieve those goals?
Personally, [I want] to make sure that, nationally, this country is on a trajectory to live with the current infectious diseases and to be able to better manage and cope with the threat of future infectious diseases, because this is not the end. It's the beginning of a series of events that will become a normal for the planet, which is how do viruses and humans cohabitate in a planet where resources are becoming more and more scarce.
Our global economy is driving much more interaction and connectivity between people and people, animals and animals, humans and animals, than we've ever seen in the past. Personally, I am excited about thinking through how Henry Ford positions itself in a global economy, so that we can be part of the solution as it relates to the country being able to prepare itself to fight future viruses and prevent future pandemics from occurring.
HL: You mentioned healthcare inequity and disparities and outcomes of health. Are there other topics that you're personally interested in and invested in as well?
Edwards: Healthcare economics. In addition to making sure everyone can get equitable access to care that results in outcomes that are consistent with the treatment that they receive, and racism, and poverty, and disparities, I'm interested in ensuring that we think deeply and critically about how do we sustain that healthcare system that provides equitable, accessible care. Our current healthcare economics are broken. The system of healthcare does not exist in a way that delivers on what our country should be able to deliver on, which is a healthy workforce. It just doesn't make sense that we can be one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with some of the wealthiest people in the world, but we can't figure out a way to have a healthy citizenry in a workforce and healthy environments.
Dr. Scott Hayworth began his career wanting to become a doctor who would focus on patient care and safety. Today, it is this area of expertise that became a focal point of his leadership role as CEO/President of CareMount. Even as COVID-19 strains hospitals and health systems across the country, he continues to lead through this crisis by emphasizing that extra safety measures must be met to keep offices open to care for patients beyond COVID. Join us as Dr. Hayworth discusses the key aspects of working with his team to foster an environment of security for his patients and staff.
An experienced chief nursing officer, holder of a PhD and other titles, Katie has accomplished much throughout her career. However, even with all these qualifications, she has not been exempt from the experience of discrimination in her professional career. In light of the recent protests, Katie tackles the hard questions surrounding racial injustice within the healthcare industry. Join us as she speaks of change through the use of empowerment and education.
