Robotic heart transplant 2 Executive changes 11 Celebrating neurodiversity 12 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
AUGUST 2025 VOLUME 41, NUMBER 8
It's tough delivering maternal care in rural areas.
Will federal cuts prompt more hospitals to close OB units?
No One Dies Alone volunteers provide ‘compassionate presence’ in last hours By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Sometimes, a dying person doesn’t have a family. Other times, they’re estranged. Sometimes, a dying person’s family lives across the country and can’t be at their side. Other times, the family simply can’t handle being there. No One Dies Alone volunteers don’t care about why. If a dying patient is alone, they want to be there. “We’re trying to bring as much compassion and love to that circumstance that we can, and that’s the most we can offer,” said Shawn Kiley, chief mission integration officer and executive sponsor of the No One Dies Alone program at Providence Continued on 9
Dr. Amy Lueking, an obstetrician-gynecologist, checks in with a patient and her baby at Avera St. Mary's Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota. The March of Dimes says South Dakota ranks second in percentage of counties that are maternity care deserts. By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Dr. Paul Berndt enjoys looking around the field at his son’s T-ball practices in Parkston, South Dakota, and seeing how many players he delivered. “In a small town, it gets to be a pretty small little network,” said Berndt, an obstetrician and family practitioner. The population of Parkston is just over 1,500 people and Avera St. Benedict Health Center, where Berndt practices, sees about 60 deliveries a year. Berndt says the residents of Parkston are grateful for his services and trust Avera St. Benedict for their care.
Closures of labor and delivery units at rural hospitals Since the end of 2020, more than 100 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies or announced they will stop this year. Source: Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform
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Providence initiative leads to dramatic rise in goals-of-care conversations
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Actual and announced closures
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Full-year estimate of closures
When Providence St. Joseph Health began documenting goals-of-care conversations for adults in intensive care units in 2016, the total was 555, or 6.8% of the patients. By last year, the number hit 8,533, or 84.8% of patients who were in one of the system’s 45 ICUs for at least five days. In the intervening years, Providence launched, fine-tuned and expanded systemwide training for clinicians on how to hold the conversations and simplified
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Mercy nurses test new Tour immerses new physicians into community around CHRISTUS hospital technology that makes Even though Dr. Jasmine Thomas grew their jobs easier up in East Texas and completed a stuBy JULIE MINDA
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
When Tracy Breece and Cheryl Denison and a team of nurse leaders visit Mercy hospitals to see how technology is helping or hindering nurses, the nurses track them down. “They’re like, ‘Oh, she’s here. Are you getting all of my feedback?’” said Breece. “They understand that feedback loop is important, and they’re eager to share.” Breece, executive director of nursing informatics, and Denison, nursing systems engineer, are leading Mercy’s Project ANEW, which stands for Advancing Nursing Continued on 11
Physicians beginning their internal medicine residency at CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Medical Center — Longview, Texas, gather during their bus tour of Longview. The residency program has been offering the bus tour since about 2018 to help incoming residents get to know the surrounding community.
dent rotation in Longview during medical school, it wasn’t until a recent bus tour that she got an up-close perspective on what life is like for marginalized members of the Longview community. She is one of 13 physicians who in late June started their internal medicine residency at CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Medical Center — Longview with a bus tour of the community they’ll be serving for the next three years. On the tour, Dr. Tiffany Egbe of Good Shepherd described the area. The group stopped at two Longview nonprofits that serve vulnerable people. The physicians got to talk with leaders and Continued on 8