The organization will undergo a multi-year process of updating its logo throughout its service areas in Virginia and North Carolina.
Norfolk, Virginia-based Sentara Healthcare recently introduced new branding for the nonprofit healthcare organization, including a new name and updated logo.
The system, now Sentara Health, made the name change to reflect its focus on the overall health and well-being of its consumers. The brand change also reflects the alignment of the organization's healthcare services and health plans, and by the end of the year, the Optima Health and Virginia Premier brands will unify under the Sentara Health Plans brand.
The system also updated its logo with a more contemporary and bolder version of the original logo, to create a more modern, people-centered, and approachable look. It still features the original's "swoosh," which represents the organization's "gold standard" in healthcare to its consumers.
Sentara logo refresh. Courtesy of Sentara.
"It is an exciting day for all of us here at Sentara. Our new name and logo help us show our commitment to making healthcare simple, seamless, personal, and more affordable," Dennis Matheis, president and CEO of Sentara, said in a press release on Thursday. "By leveraging both healthcare services and a variety of health plan options, we are creating greater access for consumers to receive high-quality healthcare."
The brand refresh follows more than a year of market research and communication with the organization's patients, members, communities, individuals, and colleagues, the system said, and reflects consumers' trust in Sentara.
"Our name may be changing to reflect healthcare today and, in the future, but our commitment to our mission, to improve health every day, is stronger than ever," Matheis said.
In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Matheis shared that Sentara was in the middle of an organization-wide strategic refresh, with a focus on the consumer.
"We've got a number of work efforts centered around consumerism and the notion that we need to become more consumer-oriented as an organization. We've labeled it 'One Sentara,' and it's leveraging both the healthcare financing side of our organization alongside our healthcare delivery to create more seamless, easy-to-use experiences for our patients/members," he said. "This will be a multi-year journey for us as an organization. It's about how we help drive and make healthcare simpler for our patients and customers, more accessible, ultimately more affordable, and get to a more simplified experience. The work that we're kicking off there is going to engage fairly deeply into the leadership ranks of our organization as well."
Additionally, Matheis said: "I firmly believe that organizing the financial healthcare and the delivery of care within the same framework is where the world is headed from a healthcare evolution perspective."
"It really is about creating the system to allow for things to be easier for people to experience their healthcare journey," he said. "One of the reasons I'm really excited about this journey that we're on [is that] as we go through it, it's going to make healthcare simpler, more seamless, and more accessible for people, and that ultimately should translate into healthier individuals and people being able to live healthier lives."
Jennifer Greenman discusses how to leverage technology already in place for cancer care needs, as well as City of Hope's acquisition of CTCA.
Editor's note: This conversation is a transcript from an episode of the HealthLeaders Podcast. Audio of the full interview can be found here and below.
Jennifer Greenman joined Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national oncology network of hospitals and outpatient care centers, in 2019 as chief information officer, where she has led the implementation of technology to meet the broad needs of the organization's workforce and the patients and families who come to the organization for their cancer care.
In February 2022, CTCA was acquired by City of Hope, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer research and treatment organization based in California, with the goal to democratize cancer care and research. The combined system is one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the country, reaching cancer patients and their families in California, Arizona, Illinois, and Georgia.
In a recent podcast interview, Greenman talks about her role as CIO for City of Hope, how she leverages technology that is already in place for new and upcoming needs, and the integration of Cancer Treatment Centers of America into City of Hope.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What initially drew you to work in healthcare and information technology? Can you walk me through your career journey?
Jennifer Greenman: Going way back, when I was very young, I had zero ambition toward working in medicine or even information technology. When I was in high school, I started volunteering at one of our local hospitals to get volunteer hours, and while I was there I worked in the pharmacy. They, surprisingly, after a while offered me a job as a pharmacy tech in high school. It was an interesting job to work there at a hospital, felt real [and] impactful in a way that most normal high school positions wouldn't give someone an opportunity to do. That was my entry into healthcare all the way back at the age of 17.
I continued to work in both that hospital as well as another hospital pharmacy all the way through high school and even part of the way through college. That time though, I still had no real strong ambition to work in medicine. After starting my undergraduate education in music, I quickly decided that was not the professional path for me. I joined the business school at Florida State University, which I enjoyed, and graduated in 2001, right after September 11.
The job market at that time was not good, particularly for new college graduates, but the Cerner Corporation in Kansas City was hiring a lot of new business school graduates from Florida State. I was fortunate at the time to have gotten a position with Cerner and learned a lot about healthcare software implementation [and] electronic medical record implementations at a pivotal time, as organizations were moving very rapidly from paper medical records to electronic medical records. It happened to be the right place at the right time and felt more of a passion as I did in high school to work in healthcare and to apply my business and my IT skills in this space.
I worked at Cerner for a couple of years, and one of my clients was the Bayfront Health System down in St. Petersburg, Florida. I loved the team there. I loved the people who worked in the hospital. I felt like I learned more in a short time at Bayfront than I had learned in any of my prior years of education or professional experience. I joined the health system in about 2004 and continued to work there all the way until 2013, progressing from systems analyst all the way through CIO at the time I left.
Around 2013, I was ready for more professional growth. Bayfront had been acquired by a large for-profit hospital operator at that time and I just had my second child, and I thought this is a great time to look for another professional opportunity. I was able to get a job at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and was fortunate enough to get a job as a senior director. Much to my surprise, I was promoted to CIO at Moffitt about a year later. I continued to work at Moffitt until 2019 [when] I was ready for more professional growth and was introduced to CTCA, now called City of Hope. [I] viewed that as an opportunity to impact oncology care at a national level. It was similar in mission and scope [to]what I had had at Moffitt. So it was a great fit for me professionally.
In all of healthcare, there's this intrinsic motivator to help patients, to help advance our clinicians' quality of care delivery, our patients' quality of life, and I saw that as a great opportunity to really influence and make a difference on a national level.
Having worked at Moffitt, I was familiar with the unique challenges and opportunities that are inherent to this industry. Just as the disease burden of cancer on patients and their loved ones is tremendous, I think anyone who has dealt with cancer on a personal level understands that the emotional and cognitive burden experienced by physicians, nurses, and scientists to treat them is also significant.
This role as a technology leader for cancer centers makes me feel a profound responsibility to help empower our workforce with digital solutions that can help ease this burden, wherever possible, so that our clinicians, our scientists, are able to cure patients, to improve their quality of life, [and] to provide them with some meaningful relief for the experience that they're going through.
HL:In your role as CIO, how do you choose the best technology to support the organization's workforce to address the needs of the patients?
Greenman: In terms of formal methodology, we follow similar practices that you find in most other businesses. We typically collaborate with our business partners, patients, family, or caregivers to define problems and opportunities. Then we drill down into functional capabilities that can fulfill their needs. The reality, often for those of us in healthcare, is that more often than not, we already have a solution or platform that can be leveraged to meet these needs. Our work is usually about creating new applications or workflows with existing platforms and less often new technology acquisition. This approach is always going to be preferred, as our existing platforms often have sustained interoperability or are capable of system integration with the other solutions that we already run within our organization, so the initial effort and the time to value tends to be less than if we were to roll out a net new product or service within our organization.
When we do have a need to look at novel technology to meet business needs, workforce needs, [or] patient needs, then we'll scan the market for established vendors and identify those that have a track record of success, ideally with other cancer centers. Oncology is a highly complex multidisciplinary care model. The products that are out there on the market that are tailored to non-oncology conditions in many cases are not capable or out-of-the-box ready to enable the unique data and workflow requirements that we have in oncology care.
Cancer treatment has a number of unique characteristics that require highly specialized technology needs, particularly in these acute care cancer hospital organizations. High-quality cancer care requires a team approach, so coordination across the care team can be impacted both positively and negatively with technology. I personally am energized by the potential opportunity for disruption in the space and looking forward to how we can drive innovation and transformation with new partners, new products, and new services.
HL: There's been a lot of talk about AI and ChatGPT recently. What are your thoughts on those tools and do you plan on using them if you don't already?
Greenman: I'm cautiously optimistic on the potential for augmented intelligence in general and generative AI such as ChatGPT specifically to improve healthcare. Augmented intelligence is already being utilized broadly for clinical decision support to deliver precision oncology, for example [in] identifying therapeutic options based on a patient's genomic profile. Another example would be supporting radiologists and pathologists in reviewing and evaluating diagnostic imaging.
I think it will be quite some time before generative AI is accepted for use cases beyond administrative and marketing workflows. There would have to be a lot of evidence to back up the efficacy of those tools for clinical use cases broadly. But I am excited about the potential. It's something that we in healthcare do need to continue to explore. We are exploring generative AI tools to facilitate large-scale information curation and dissemination for our call center workflows. To be clear, all of it's very early, it's not live yet, and it's still in sort of exploratory mode. But I do think it's a potentially significant opportunity to improve both efficiency and efficacy of these workflows.
HL: What pain points and other initiatives are you hoping to address this year as CIO?
Greenman: Cancer Treatment Centers of America was acquired by City of Hope a little over a year ago. We are now nationally recognized and known as City of Hope across all of the markets that we support. For the past year, we have been focused on prioritizing integration of our legacy CTCA markets with City of Hope in IT, and that has certainly been my top priority. I would not necessarily characterize it as a pain point; I would say it's a very important and necessary part of our transition and operating at scale across all of our markets across the country.
The vision of this acquisition was to democratize access to cancer care, bringing cutting-edge therapies that are pioneered at City of Hope, which is an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center located in southern California. Our vision has been to democratize access to these therapies to cancer patients located in communities across the country that we serve, whether those be in the southern California market, where City of Hope has historically operated, or our Phoenix, Atlanta, and Chicago markets that CTCA historically has served.
Some of the work that we've been doing has been to deploy a common electronic medical record platform to all of the legacy CTCA hospitals and clinics. It's been one of my priorities this year, and it's something we're extremely excited about, [as it] is an opportunity to standardize care delivery models and bring a modern technology platform to our clinicians across the country.
Another high priority for us has been to deploy our patient access model across all sites of care, leveraging and powered by technologies such as [our] CRM platforms. This also will help better standardize the intake model for our new patients located in communities across the country.
Those have been opportunities to really build upon the strengths of our respective organizations to build a leading-edge, exceptional care experience for patients regardless of where they're located.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who aspire to be leaders in healthcare and tech?
Greenman: Throughout my career, which is now over 20 years in this industry, I have often struggled with lack of confidence. Sometimes I felt intimidated, particularly in those situations when I was the only female, which is regrettably still quite often. Or in cases when I might have been younger than others, which is regrettably not as common as it used to be. But those are situations where I didn't always feel as competent in delivery. I shared this insecurity once with a very wise colleague and she told me to remind myself in these circumstances that I have earned my seat at the table; that everyone brings a unique expertise, a unique value to the conversation, and mine is information technology leadership in healthcare. This is advice that I often remind myself [about] in these situations when I feel uncertain or insecure, or not as competent as I should be. This has helped me bolster my own confidence to speak up, to be heard, even at times when it doesn't feel comfortable to do so.
I've also noticed that some leaders, particularly female leaders, don't always feel comfortable with self-promotion. We can downplay our personal accomplishments and are often inclined to share credit and promote others' accomplishments which, to be clear, I think is a positive trait. It's not something I would ever want to portray as negative. Unfortunately, in professional settings, it can put us at a disadvantage compared to our peers who are very adept at self-promotion. My advice for rising and established female leaders, or any leader for that matter, is we have to remember that we have a brand, a personal brand, a professional brand, and that it's incumbent on us to promote that brand along with the strengths and accomplishments of our teams that we lead. We cannot neglect the importance of our personal reputation and professional reputation and profile within the industry.
UMass Memorial Health CEO Eric Dickson, MD, MHCM, details the innovative ways in which the Massachusetts health system has broken down the barriers of care for the communities it serves.
It's been a decade since Eric Dickson, MD, MHCM, became president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health (UMMH), a $3.3 billion nonprofit health system in central Massachusetts. Following his appointment in 2013, he continued to practice as an emergency physician, which has influenced his leadership in numerous ways.
The health system consists of four owned hospitals across 10 campuses with more than 1,000 licensed beds, four affiliated hospitals, and 70 community practice offices, caring for communities across the greater Worcester region. It also has a behavioral health agency and hospital, six urgent care centers, and an Accountable Care Organization, as well as a partnership with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Dickson teaches emergency medicine.
In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Dickson details the innovative ways in which UMMH breaks down the barriers of care for its communities, which includes BIPOC, immigrant, and low-income communities living in and around Worcester.
Eric Dickson, MD, MHCM, President and CEO, UMass Memorial Health. Photo courtesy of UMass Memorial Health.
1. Serving the Underserved at Home and Abroad
As an emergency physician, Dickson says he felt like he was in touch with the community because the ER is where community members come to get needed care. But that wasn't necessarily the case, and the COVID-19 pandemic was a lesson in continuing to reach out to underserved communities.
"When COVID hit, and we started spending more time on the ambulances and going out with the vaccination teams with our care mobile, and even now with our mobile Addiction Treatment Center, I realized that I didn't really understand the community as well as I thought I did," he said. "The trip to the ER is a massive burden and you don't touch [all] the people that need help [in the community]."
During the pandemic, Dickson joined UMMH care teams to administer vaccines to low-income neighborhoods in Worcester.
"Going door-to-door, knocking and asking people [often through an interpreter] if they'd like to get the COVID vaccine. And people that were never going to get that vaccine, and some of which [who could have died due to the virus], said 'Oh, yes, please,'" he said.
"If you really want to get to those communities, many of which are afraid to leave their neighborhood, especially if they're non-English-speaking, then you're going to [have to] go right to where they live," he said. "More and more that's what we're trying to do."
He added, "It's really embracing [my] ignorance and asking them what we can do to help."
One of the communities that UMMH and Dickson are focusing on helping is the Ghanaian population that resides in and around Worcester.
"[Ghanaian immigrants] are 5,000 times more likely to end up in Worcester than any other city in the nation," he said. "We want to get in touch with this population. I need to understand how better to care for them. I want employees that are [of] Ghanaian heritage to be proud to be a part of UMass Memorial."
Instead of telling the community what the organization was going to do for them, Dickson said, they asked what the organization could do to help.
"We met with all their pastors and their churches, and we did employee resource groups, and [we found out the community] wanted some very simple things," he said.
"[Recently we had] some of our caregivers in Ghana, taking care of people there, because that was one of the things that was important to [our community]. The most important message is you have to meet the people where they live [to care for] underserved populations."
Additionally, Dickson said, the plan is to follow up on additional feedback the system received from the Ghanaian community.
"We were told by their feedback, 'We'd love a food pantry in our church,'" he said. "'We'd love some free medical care within our church: checkups, blood pressure checks, physicals. We'd like help for family and friends in Ghana.'"
The health system also does job fairs in the community with an interpreter and helps Ghanaian community members with the application process onsite, which has helped the system with hiring candidates and has given the community employment opportunities.
2. 100,000 Ideas: Putting Frontline Ideas Into Action
Dickson's experience as an emergency physician gives him an edge during difficult situations because he is used to making decisions fast.
"Emergency physicians are constantly put in a position where they have to make decisions with limited amounts of information," he said. "If somebody comes in, they're sick, you have to deal with that. And you don't always know what's going on. I think the same thing is true as a CEO, that a lot of times you just need to decide, you need to move. If you don't have all the information you want in chaotic times, like now and certainly during COVID, I think that style works really well."
But he's also trying to balance the emergency position with having the chance to slow down now that times are less hectic.
"I've had to take a little bit of the ER medicine out of me…into the way I lead here," he said.
During the pandemic, his emergency physician background and his proactive approach to talent development put the health system in a good place. Methods such as LEAN and problem solving were put in place during the past several years prior to the pandemic, which helped staff take care of their patients and each other. And those learnings really hit home during COVID.
"Massachusetts was the fourth hardest-hit state in the nation," he said. "We were hit early, we were hit hard. And for us, it really solidified the team."
He added: "For us, it seemed like we had almost seven years of my time here getting ready for COVID. And then when it hit, we used all the talents and the development tools we had been training people to do, things like the DCU Center Field Hospital, the vaccination mobile where we go into underserved neighborhoods, the vaccination center in downtown Worcester. We train everybody in process improvement on the way in the door and we want everyone here to be a problem solver, to be thinking like an industrial engineer. It really paid off during COVID and it's one of the reasons that we shined so brightly during all of it."
Dickson also shared an initiative that has enabled him to learn the wants and needs directly from frontline staff.
"One of the things that I established as CEO on day one was an idea system that engaged our frontline workforce and asked them how we can improve," he said. "And over the 10 years that I've been CEO, we've implemented over 100,000 ideas from the frontline workforce. These are things to make care safer for our patients, caregiving safer for our caregivers, ways to enhance the patient experience, [and] ways to enhance the caregiver experience here."
"The ideas add up to transforming the organization to an organization that really embraces innovation, and finding new and better ways to do things," he said. "My favorite tagline, that is written on chocolate bars that I run around and hand out, is 'Thanks for taking great care of our patients and one another.' And right now, even more so than 10 years ago, that's absolutely critical."
3. Executing A Strong Vision for The Hospital of the Future
Dickson looks to the Hospital at Home programs as a way to shift away from the current healthcare model of taking care of people in the hospital.
"I'm a big supporter of [Community] Paramedicine and using paramedics to care for people in their homes," he said. "During COVID, we started caring for people in their home that required hospital-level care. What we've learned is that people do better in their homes. People don't get hospital-acquired infections when they're in their home. People have access to their culturally appropriate nutrition and food and family when they're in their home. They sleep better. There are people that can come visit them."
This inspired the organization to start a Hospital at Home program that uses paramedics, nurses, virtual doctors, and in-person doctors to care for people in their homes. And so far, those patients are having much better outcomes, according to Dickson.
"We're extending that out to something called Mobile Integrated Health," he said. In this model, patients can call an ambulance or their doctor, and an ambulance will be sent out to assess the patient, while a doctor is virtually assisting the paramedics. This enables the paramedics to get vital sign information and labs without the patients needing to leave their home. This eliminates spending hours in the ER waiting room, and if a patient needs to be seen right away, they can be brought to the hospital by ambulance.
"[Currently] we do that for free, [but] we won't be able to do it for free forever," he said. "We've got to build a business model around that working with the insurance companies. I can tell you we're saving a lot, we're delivering better care to the patient, and we're saving the insurance companies a lot of money by being able to do this. I love these kinds of projects that are new, innovative, [and] disruptive … Healthcare needs that right now."
"Healthcare is in trouble right now. Big trouble," Dickson said. "The challenge is that we're trying to go back to doing it the old way."
"Our ability to move patients through the bricks and mortar hospital to a nursing home or to a skilled nursing facility has slowed because the nursing homes don't have staff, so we have patients staying in the hospital longer," he said. "We don't get paid by the day, we get paid by the admission. Financially, hospitals across the state are all losing money at an unbelievable rate and UMass Memorial isn't any different. And now you've got an aging population, so more patients, and you've got doctors and nurses aging out."
"My vision for UMass Memorial Health is to do everything we can for our patients, to keep them home healthy and their chronic disease managed," he added. "That's doing everything we can to leverage digital medicine, wearables, virtual visits, paramedic visits in the home, [and] Hospital at Home level care."
"We need as few people as possible to end up in the bricks-and-mortar hospitals," Dickson concluded. "In many ways, I want to put our hospitals out of business because we've been able to keep people healthy or provide care in the home. For that to happen, we need to think more like a 'payvider' instead of trying to increase revenue by patient visits. We're trying to decrease expenses by decreasing patient visits that are unnecessary. It's a model whose time has come, and it is a model that best aligns with our mission to improve the health of diverse populations. Our mission is not to take care of sick people, even though that's most of what we do. Our mission is to improve the health of the people of this region and we're going to leverage every asset and every great idea that we have to do just that."
Editor's note: This story was updated on April 27, 2023.
Michael Gentry will lead the Ohio health system effective July 3.
Dayton, Ohio-based Kettering Health chose its next CEO following a five-month search, the system announced Wednesday.
Michael Gentry, who has served as COO of Norfolk, Virginia-based Sentara Healthcare since 2016, will lead Kettering Health beginning on July 3.
"Through our in-depth search and interview process, I've come to learn that Michael possesses great leadership acumen, deep respect for the Kettering Health mission and team, a heart for the ministry of healthcare, and for the people and communities we are privileged to serve," Celeste R. Blyden, chair of the Kettering Health membership and board of directors, said in a statement.
Gentry succeeds Michael Mewhirter who has served as interim CEO on top of his duties as CFO for the system since November 2022, following the retirement of the system's previous permanent CEO, Fred Manchur.
Gentry's last day at Sentara Healthcare will be July 1, ending his 15-year tenure with the health system. He most recently led the operations of the system's 12 hospitals, Sentara Live Care Corporation, and Sentara Enterprises.
"Mike has been an invaluable member of our team, providing exceptional leadership with a focus on our consumers and quality care in our communities," Dennis Matheis, president and CEO of Sentara Healthcare said in a statement. "His contributions to our organization, the healthcare industry at large, and the commonwealth of Virginia have been numerous. We are grateful for his dedication and hard work during his time with us. He will be greatly missed."
Prior to joining Sentara in 2008, Gentry served as president and CEO of Memorial Health Systems in Ormond Beach, Florida from 2000 to 2008, and served as CEO of Park Ridge Hospital in Hendersonville, North Carolina from 1996 to 2000, according to his LinkedIn profile.
"It has been an honor to be a member of the Sentara team for the past 15 years and I send my sincere thanks for the opportunity to work with wonderful colleagues who share a common mission of improving health every day," Gentry said in a statement.
In a separate statement, Gentry said, "I am honored to have the opportunity to join the Kettering Health team, an organization with a long and rich tradition of blending innovative care and Christ-centered compassion to foster health, hope, and healing. I look forward to collaborating with the dedicated physicians and team members that work tirelessly to improve care for the people we serve."
Although there is a big increase in exits year over year, hospital CEO exits are slowly declining month to month.
The number of hospital CEOs making role changes has steadied during the first quarter of 2023, but there have still been significant exits recorded compared year over year, according to a new CEO Turnover Report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
During March 2023, 13 hospital CEOs left their posts, a significant increase from the three hospital CEO exits recorded in March 2022. Year to date, 54 hospital CEOs made role changes through Q1 this year, a whopping 86% increase from the 29 exits announced through Q1 of 2022.
Although there is a big increase in exits year over year, CEO exits are slowly declining each month this year. So far, 23 hospital CEOs left their roles in January, and 18 left their roles in February, with a decrease to 13 exits recorded in March.
Reasons for hospital CEOs exiting their roles include retirement, stepping down to serve in a different role with their organization, interim leadership period ending, leaving for a new organization, or being terminated.
While government and non-profit CEOs are leading all industries with 85 exits recorded through the end of March, hospitals are second in the lead with its recorded 54 executive exits through the end of the quarter. The technology sector is next with 50 announced CEO changes following significant industry layoffs, and the financial industry is next with 40 CEO exits.
"Companies are undergoing a significant amount of change as they respond to economic challenges, higher costs, and talent management issues," Andrew Challenger, leadership expert and SVP of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., said in a statement.
According to the report, the number of CEO changes across sectors has also gone down month over month but has increased year over year.
The number of CEO changes across sectors fell 17% from 167 CEO exits tracked in February 2023 to 139 exits tracked in March 2023. But through March 2023, 418 CEOs made exits across sectors, which is a 6% increase from the 395 CEOs who made exits during Q1 2022.
This is the second-highest quarterly total of CEO exits tracked during the first quarter of a year. The highest was during Q1 2020 when 441 CEOs left their roles.
Retiring president and CEO Lori Herndon will work closely with the interim leader for a smooth leadership transition.
New Jersey health system AtlantiCare announced the board has chosen an interim president and CEO to lead the system following outgoing president and CEO Lori Herndon's retirement.
Michael J. Charlton, who currently serves on the health system's board, will serve in the interim role while the board conducts a search for a permanent leader.
Starting on May 1, Charlton will begin to work closely with Herndon for a smooth leadership transition, where he will take on the role full-time on June 1. Herndon will be available on an as-needed basis until her retirement at the end of June, ending her 40-year career with the health system.
"Michael is a proven leader who is very familiar with AtlantiCare, the communities we serve, and the changing healthcare landscape," David Goddard, AtlantiCare's current board chair, said in a statement. "He is also very well known to our team members and stakeholders in our communities and is the ideal person to help lead our health system through a smooth transition while the Board continues to conduct its search for AtlantiCare’s next CEO."
Charlton has been on the health system's board since 2009 and served as board chair from 2017 to earlier this year. He also has served as a board member of the American Hospital Association. Charlton's LinkedIn profile describes him as "a Healthcare thought leader with national experience in Healthcare governance, leadership, and policy."
Following the merger, the 10-hospital and 8-hospital systems will continue to operate under their established brand names.
Milwaukee-based Froedtert Health and Neenah-based ThedaCare announced on Tuesday that the systems have signed a letter of intent to combine the systems.
According to a press release, the organizations hope to merge to "advance healthcare for patients and improve health and the delivery of healthcare in Wisconsin." The goal is for the merger to be completed by the end of 2023, pending the completion of a definitive agreement, due diligence, and board and government regulatory approvals.
Following the merger, the 10-hospital Froedtert system in the southeast and the 8-hospital ThedaCare system in the northeast of the state will continue to operate under their established brands and names.
"Together, we will offer high-quality health care services for treatment and prevention in a coordinated manner. This will help ensure seamless access and continuity of care in the communities the combined organization will serve," the organizations say on a website dedicated to the deal.
Currently, Froedtert Health and ThedaCare have an existing quaternary partnership, including the Medical College of Wisconsin, to expand healthcare access in the state as well as a joint venture to create two new health campuses in Fond du Lac and Oshkosh. The joint organization hopes to further close care gaps, solve workforce issues, and develop innovations to meet patient and community needs.
"Both of our organizations have deep, long-standing ties in the communities we serve. Our Wisconsin roots have been instrumental in building creative solutions to meet our communities' health needs," Cathy Jacobson, president and CEO of Froedtert Health, said in a statement. "By coming together with the state’s leader in regional community health, our combined organization will be poised to meaningfully address health equity and disparities, enhance access to a broader array of services and make it easier for patients to navigate the health care system. The Medical College of Wisconsin will continue to be an important partner in our work together."
Jacobson will serve as CEO of the combined system, with ThedaCare's current CEO, Imran A. Andrabi, MD, FAAFM, serving as president. Following a six-month transition, Jacobson will retire and Andrabi will assume the role of president and CEO of the combined system.
"ThedaCare and Froedtert Health have a commitment to the people of Wisconsin," Andrabi said in a statement. "We are alike in many ways, and our leaders and our boards have long been asking how we can accelerate our work to make a positive and lasting impact on our state. We have a shared vision for what we can do together to improve the health and well-being of the communities and be proactive partners in health. We are eager to start exploring how we can build a healthier, brighter future for Wisconsin."
Additional C-suite leaders have been chosen to serve the combined system including:
ThedaCare's current chief strategy officer, Thomas Arquilla, who will serve as chief growth officer
Froedtert Health's EVP of finance, chief financial and administrative officer and treasurer, Scott Hawig, CPA, CMA, MBA, who will serve as CFO
Froedtert Health's chief business and development officer, David Olson, who will serve as chief business development officer
Froedtert Health's EVP and chief clinical officer, Ian Schwartz, MD, will serve as chief clinical officer
ThedaCare's COO and CFO, Mark Thompson, will serve as chief transformation investment officer
The full executive team will be identified prior to the definitive agreement.
Additionally, the board for the joint organization will have 18 members from both Froedtert Health and ThedaCare, including Jacobson and Andrabi. Jud Snyder, who serves as Froedtert Health's current vice chair and chair-elect will serve as the initial board chair. Jim Kotek, ThedaCare's current board chair will serve as the initial vice chair.
The most job growth occurred in home healthcare services and hospitals.
While the healthcare sector was among the sectors to trend up in job growth in March, job gains were lower than the average monthly gain experienced over the past six months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment situation summary released on April 7.
The healthcare sector added 34,000 jobs in March, with the biggest job growth experienced in home healthcare services (+15,000). Hospitals added 11,000 jobs, the ambulatory sector added 15,000 jobs, and nursing and residential care facilities added 8,000 jobs.
Over the past six months, the healthcare sector had an average monthly gain of 54,000 jobs, with March bringing that average down.
So far this year, the healthcare sector added 58,000 jobs in January and 44,000 jobs in February.
Healthcare joined the leisure and hospitality, government, and professional and business services sectors in a continued trend up in job gains.
During the month of March, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 236,000, according to the BLS, which was also lower than the average monthly gain of 334,000 jobs over the past 6 months.
The number of unemployed people (5.8 million) and the unemployment rate (3.5%) changed little in March.
Mallary McKinney shares her retail-inspired marketing strategy and discusses the importance of creating a strong brand promise.
Mallary McKinney leads UnityPoint Health's enterprise-wide marketing department with a passionate focus on branding and communication strategies. In her role, she taps into her past experience as a marketing leader for Target to successfully roll out system-wide messaging and branding across the system's three-state footprint in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Prior to her promotion to SVP and chief marketing and communications officer, she served as VP of brand, marketing, and communications for the health system. She's been with UnityPoint Health for eight years.
In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, McKinney shares more about her retail-inspired marketing strategy and talks about the importance of creating a strong brand promise.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HL:What are your marketing/branding strategies for UnityPoint Health? What pain points are you currently addressing through your marketing work?
McKinney: The first decade of my career was more in retail marketing and a lot of that translates, I've learned, to healthcare marketing. When I came to UnityPoint almost eight years ago now, we had a logo, we had an identity from a UnityPoint Health perspective, [and] we were one brand, but when you start to unpack that … identity-wise we didn't really know who we were from a universal perspective.
The first part of that journey was to align on values. The core of any company, to me, is your mission, your vision, and your values. But even values are a little inside baseball. So, what we did in the first two years of my entry into UnityPoint was to go through a brand discovery. That is where you identify your purpose, you take all that makes UnityPoint Health great, and you look at it and you say, 'Who do we really want to be? How do we want to show up both internally [and] also to the world? What's your promise?'
That's where the UnityPoint Health brand journey started. We ended up coming up with—and this was all created internally through stakeholders, interviews, and insight sessions—a brand promise. And that is truly what all of our branding is built upon. Our brand promise is "Know how much you matter to this world." That's the crux of why we came into healthcare.
We had [our foundation] and our brand discovery output and we were having fun with it. We [then] launched a huge campaign [around] people are amazing, we're here to help keep them that way. It wasn't doctors and equipment and technology, it was all about you [the patient]. And we were getting lots of accolades [for that work]. And then COVID hit, and none of it felt appropriate anymore. We were able to do some really cool things through COVID and pivoted like crazy but still rested on those brand principles.
I would say the pain point now is coming out of COVID and just trying to find your way again. We're all changed after COVID. And although it's been an interesting dialogue with people across the organization, people across the industry, you have new crises that you're dealing with, which are staffing and finances. I'd say that is the pain point right now, helping everybody get through that and keeping our brand front and center along the way.
Mallary McKinney, SVP, chief marketing and communications officer, UnityPoint Health. Photo courtesy of UnityPoint Health.
HL:How have you taken your learnings from working as a marketing leader for Target and applied them to healthcare marketing?
McKinney: It was such a fun brand to work for because doors were opened and you never were told 'no.' The ethos of marketing at Target is all about what's the biggest next idea. It's really relentless around getting to the next thing. Coming to healthcare, that was different.
When I came to UnityPoint, I hammered, and I still do this every day, [on] why aren't we the brand to love? UnityPoint and other healthcare companies should be at the top of people's lists when they go around a circle and say my favorite brand is Nike, Apple, and Target. There is no other industry [in which] you're saving lives. Not only is this a place where you're saving lives, but you're having these incredible moments with the brand in your life. You're having your baby, you're ringing the bell with your mom when she [beats] cancer, you're watching somebody pass. These are absolutely life-changing moments. And so that is the biggest transition that I brought from Target to UnityPoint, which is saying 'Why not?' and trying some interesting new things. It took a while for people to get used to, but it's been rewarding because it's not as common in healthcare.
My background in retail transfers much more than I ever anticipated. At the end of the day, we're all trying to do the same thing, right? We're trying to build affinity with some level of persona, some type of consumer. The basic principles of branding translate across any industry. I think we need more people in healthcare that have this passion because healthcare just translates so well. If you have passion in the industry that you're in and you were able to identify those personas and bring those personas to the table, you can translate that right to healthcare and figure out who your audience is. So many of the principles of basic branding can translate industry to industry.
HL: What initiatives are you leading around patient experience, being consumer-centric, bringing in new patients, etc.?
McKinney: There's a lot of disruption in healthcare and that's one of the bigger challenges in making sure that your basic principles are taken care of first. When we're thinking about consumerism and giving people our value proposition work, which came out of the brand discovery, [it's about] making care easier and more personal.
One of the things we're doing is we're launching a new website. We're making it easier to figure out how to navigate a very complicated system. Healthcare is complicated. One of the things when we developed our value proposition, [I said] 'Can we make it easier and more personal?' So being able to launch a website that innately knows your location and gives you the content that you need for the location that you're in, it's basic.
How do we just make access easy? How do we give the right information to our patients to say, 'Where you want to go in this case is here' and then building technology around that. It's not earth-shattering, it's not necessarily a breakthrough, but it's constantly refining to make it easier for your consumer to access you and get the care that they need. We did all kinds of stuff around that, not only the website project but also marketing around that and even after COVID trying to get people to feel safe in our system again.
During COVID I was trying to figure out how to talk to people in not a threatening way. If you think about where headspace was at, and you're getting all this different information in from a million different places and nothing feels trusted, healthcare kind of [was] on a pedestal.
We started saying, 'Should we kind of do some PSA-type work?' And it just didn't feel like us. It was such a hard pivot from the people are amazing campaign and it's all about you. We knew we needed to get some information out and needed to be clearer and more direct, so we ended up doing it through the voice of a child. This little kid would get up on his pedestal and he would say all the things that were hard to say but we needed to hear: 'Get your vaccine,' 'Make sure you're accessing care.' He would do it through this softer side of a PSA. We got so many handwritten letters for that campaign, tons of people saying, 'When is he coming back with a new message?' And 'I just love him.' So it [resonated].
[Now] it doesn't feel appropriate with the various things that are going on in the industry to do a massive campaign again, so why don't we make our whole campaign about what's so great about working here and the culture here? Showing our people how much they matter, being able to create brand ambassadors from our people. What we're doing now in this campaign that's still running is purely talent acquisition done through an interesting breakthrough way that feels like us.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who want to lead in healthcare, whether it's marketing or just in general?
McKinney: Be authentically you. Thinking through the last eight years of my team and what we've been through together, staying true to that has worked really well. Trust each other and be authentic and work our way through. Don't underestimate yourself. Just get after it, give them all you've got. If you're yourself and you're sharing your why, and you're being true to who you are, you will succeed.
Editor's note: This article was updated on April 11, 2023.
The president of Mercy Health's Lima market shares her passion and insights into pharmacy and provider care.
Editor's note: This conversation is a transcript from an episode of the HealthLeaders Podcast. Audio of the full interview can be found here and below.
Ronda Lehman, PharmD, joined Mercy Health, now a part of Bon Secours Mercy Health, in 1995, beginning in the pharmacy department of St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima, Ohio. Now, 28 years later, she serves as president of Mercy Health's Lima market, where St. Rita's Medical Center serves as the flagship hospital.
The Lima market serves half a million patients across 10 counties in northwestern Ohio through the hospital, three freestanding urgent care centers, a freestanding emergency department, a joint venture with an orthopedic hospital, an ambulatory surgery center, and more than 20 physician practice locations.
Lehman recently sat down with HealthLeaders for a podcast interview, during which she talks about Mercy Health's Lima market and current initiatives she's excited about, and shares her career journey and leadership advice.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What initially drew you to work in healthcare? What has your healthcare career journey looked like?
Ronda Lehman: I was a "volun-teen" at a local hospital in the pharmacy department and I had the opportunity to see young professional women who were mothers and who were having the best of both worlds. I really aspired to be like them, doing something that was challenging, fulfilling, still having a family, and also helping my community. Healthcare was out of the gate something that interested me, specifically pharmacy.
From there, I journeyed on and started pharmacy school, and really anticipated that when I completed pharmacy school, I would probably move into a clinical pharmacist-type role and would be [involved with] direct patient care. I didn't envision leadership per se, but I'm very grateful for the path that my career has taken me, because I have had incredible mentors along the way and lots of opportunities to do many different things in healthcare. Looking back, I can't imagine it any other way. I've worked in operations of the hospital, I've worked in the ambulatory physician practice side, I've worked in population health, and now I'm the president for Mercy Health St. Rita's in Lima.
HL: What initially drew you to work at Mercy Health and then continue to stay with the organization?
Lehman: What I saw at Mercy Health St. Rita's, and what I have seen throughout the years, is a genuine commitment to people, to each other, to our patients. When I think about why I've stayed, it's so hard for me to envision myself anywhere else, quite honestly, because it's such a part of who I am at this point.
It's our mission and our passion for helping people and the fact that I get to bring my whole self to work, I get to bring my faith to work with me every day and that's embraced, I get to do what's right for patients every day and that is exactly what we're here for. For me, having the mission be the first and foremost of what we do is so consistent with who I try to be and who I'm striving to be as a person; that is definitely what's kept me here this long and helped me transition into so many different roles.
HL: What initiatives are you looking forward to leading for the Lima market in the coming year?
Lehman: There are a lot of things to be excited about and encouraged about. One of which is we are a couple of years into dramatically expanding our graduate medical education program for residency. We just graduated our first class of family medicine physicians last year, and this year we're graduating our first class of emergency department and internal medicine residents. The growth of that program is very exciting. We also have partnered with the Ohio State University, and we'll be offering a rural medicine track for medical students here in Lima.
When I think about the future of healthcare, I think that this migration towards a more patient-centric, consumer-focused type of care is the way of the future, whether it's hospital at home, or maximizing some of the asynchronous or synchronous visits that patients can have with their providers. The public is going to continue to demand that type of access and I see that as a real positive. That's a great way we can serve people who are in all walks of life to make sure that they are getting access to the healthcare that they need.
HL: Reflecting on the past 28 years working in healthcare, what are some of the top changes that you've experienced in the hospital pharmacy department and provider care?
Lehman: Wow, there have been tremendous changes in healthcare.
When I started so early in my career, I remember talking to people who'd been here 30-40 years. I used to hear their stories about their manual documentation systems and their manual patient profiles that they would write out by hand. We had a computer system when I started here, but the level of integration was not there at all. We had paper charts, we fought over who got that chart and who got to document in that chart trying to keep things updated. It sounds cliche, but truly as I look over the course of my career, the impact that technology has had, not only on the pharmacy department from a barcoding and scanning and safety standpoint but the impact that technology has had on the entire continuum, is just phenomenal.
Sometimes I think we are hard on it and don't give it credit where it's due. But I think that's probably because we have a lot of people working today who didn't see it before. I can remember the days of us having to manually keep track of who was on call for physicians and now we simply pick up the phone and we've got it all programmed so that at any given moment of the year, you know who's on call for a service. We kind of take those things for granted today. But truly it has propelled us forward light years from where we used to be.
At a more fundamental level, the shift in mindset around consumerism and patient experience has been pivotal. We have come from generations of "doing to" patients, and now we're trying to change a whole mindset and healthcare of "doing with" patients.
Instead of us delivering our great care to them and expecting them to just take it so willingly and appreciatively, we are now called to be so much more engaged, to be activating our listening, and to be understanding of what's important to patients, what they need in their given time. I do believe that while that may seem a little more labor-intensive to the front end, the dividends that will pay on the back end are beyond measure. It's exciting because the outcomes can be so much more impactful than we ever imagined when we are partnering with patients.
HL: What are some of your favorite aspects of being a leader at Mercy Health? How would you define your leadership style?
Lehman: There are a lot, and I know that may sound kind of crazy to some people because it's not an easy job. But I would say that's one of my favorite parts of it, is that it is so incredibly challenging and so incredibly rewarding when things do go well. I love the variety. I love working with so many different constituents even outside of healthcare to help them understand because to me healthcare is one of those things that will impact or has impacted pretty much everyone in the world. It's exciting to think about partnering, whether it's with legislators, or community groups, or the different people within the walls of the hospital, the clinicians, and the people that work a little more behind the scenes to move things forward.
I also love hearing from patients, which happens quite often, about the amazing things that our caregivers do in the moment and every single day here that is touching to them, that is impactful to them and, frankly, changes their lives. That is so exciting to me to be able to be part of an organization and even to be blessed enough to call myself the leader of so many amazing people who do such great things every day.
I would like to be, and I aspire to be, approachable, friendly, enthusiastic, even in difficult times. We need people who are excited about the future and who see a path forward. I've often been accused of being an optimist, and I take that to heart. But I would also like to be known as decisive and action-oriented. I think talk is cheap in that while we need strategy, by the end of the day we also need to see the outcomes of our decisions and the outcomes of our plans and programs. I want to be a caring and compassionate leader that, when people look back on my time here at St. Rita's, however many years from now, they see me as someone who cared deeply about the work that they do, wasn't afraid to make hard decisions, [and] always tried to consider the human aspect of all those decisions along the way.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who aspire to be leaders in healthcare?
Lehman: I am an advocate for healthcare in general and for leadership in healthcare. It can be incredibly rewarding. I want people to drop any misconceptions they may have about it and I would say that the best advice I can give them is, don't be afraid to learn a lot of aspects of healthcare. I think that starting in positions that may not seem that glorified are important steps for future credibility. I think maybe one of the reasons why people view me as someone that's relatable is … because I've done some of those jobs before and I'm not afraid to do them now. I'd be willing to do anything that it took. Having a heart of a servant leader, I think, is incredibly important.
The other thing I would say is don't shortchange yourself. Most women, and there's research around this, won't even apply for a job if they don't think they're 80% or 90% qualified. I would say, you probably are more qualified than you think you are, and you should go for it. You should absolutely put yourself out there. Then you surround yourself with amazing, talented people who can help lead and steer an organization together.