Incoming, outgoing CHA board chairs reflect 2 Progress in sepsis battle 3 Impicciche to retire as Ascension CEO 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
JULY 2025 VOLUME 41, NUMBER 7
Avera uses remote monitoring to improve health outcomes for new moms in eastern South Dakota By JULIE MINDA
Avera Health is addressing pregnancyrelated disparities faced by rural women and their newborns in eastern South Dakota through a grant-funded effort using telehealth and care coordination. Analysis by the Rural Health Information Hub, which is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration, shows rural women and their babies experience serious health disparities and higher rates of pregnancy-related mortality than their urban counterparts. To counter such disparities, Avera’s program monitors the blood pressure of new Continued on 6
The art of kindness:
With CommonSpirit grant funding, students create vibrant projects
Erik Wexler
A patient waits in a post-operating area after undergoing cataract surgery as part of PazSalud, a ministry of PeaceHealth that provides screenings and cataract surgeries to vulnerable residents of El Salvador.
A CLEAR VISION
PeaceHealth’s PazSalud ministry in El Salvador evolves over 25 years By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
For many people who come to the PazSalud optical missions in El Salvador, their world is dark. “They spend years and years getting blinder and blinder and blinder, and things get darker every day, and they don’t know why,” says Darren Streff, the program coordinator for PazSalud. Often, the solution is a simple cataract surgery. For many people, it’s the first time in decades they can see clearly, says Streff. He recalls a patient who opened her eyes the day after surgery. She was surrounded by family, including her grandson, who was about 10 and born after she developed cataracts. Continued on 8
Wexler embraces opportunity to lead Providence in improving care delivery, access By JULIE MINDA
After he was announced as president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health last summer, Erik Wexler visited as many of Providence’s 51 hospitals and other locations in seven states as he could before he assumed his new role in January. Though he’d been in leadership at Providence for nine years — most recently as chief operating officer — Wexler wanted to verify what he thought he knew about the realities on the ground. Through dialogue with associates, physicians, board members and others at each stop, he says he learned “that delivering health care, and especially whole-person care to our community, is a challenge in this environment Continued on 7
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
During the last school year, several thousand students at seven elementary schools in central Kentucky created bright, colorful art to promote kindness, adorn their schools and enrich the lives of people in their community. Their masterpieces were funded and inspired by Lexington, Kentucky-based Saint Joseph Health, through its Art of Humankindness Grant program. Art teachers at Fayette County schools used the
MOUNT VERNON, Illinois — Executives at SSM Health in Southern Illinois have watched surgeries, delivered medication and meals to patients, worked the grill in the kitchen, and even stripped beds and scrubbed toilets on visits to hospitals. Monica Heinzman, vice president of operations for the region and site administrator of SSM Health Good Samaritan Hospital in Mount Vernon, spent a morning with the plant operations department at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia. One order of business was covering every
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By JULIE MINDA
Valerie Schremp Hahn/CHA
Students at Arlington Elementary in Lexington, Kentucky, made teddy bears with inspirational notes for families at a domestic violence shelter.
Walk a Mile program puts SSM Health executives in shoes of hospital workers
Monica Heinzman, vice president of operations for Southern Illinois and site administrator for SSM Health Good Samaritan Hospital in Mount Vernon, Illinois, watches as community pharmacy supervisor Michell Ellis uses a pill-counting machine. Heinzman was spending time at the pharmacy as part of the system’s Walk a Mile in Your Shoes program, in which executives shadow employees in various departments.