Low-cost recovery fuel 4 Archie the superhero 5 Executive changes 10 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
SEPTEMBER 2026 VOLUME 42, NUMBER 9
Chief experience officers work to ensure care reflects mission By JULIE MINDA
Lisa Drumbore
Camille Haycock
Jen Bayersdorfer
Julie Spencer Washington
Nate Stromberg
Our approach is based on human dignity and service.
It’s a colossal fail if we do not deliver on kindness.
It is all about how the patients perceive that employees make them feel.
The system works to create an experience where every patient feels heard, valued and supported.
Health equity is a huge part of this — we’re treating people as individuals.
Saint Peter’s Healthcare System
CommonSpirit Health
Providence St. Joseph Health
Trinity Health
Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic
Decades ago, when Lisa Drumbore was sitting, anxious and alone, in the employee cafeteria on her first day as an intern at the WQED Public Broadcasting Service station in Pittsburgh, a man asked if he could join her for lunch. To her astonishment, it was Fred Rogers, who filmed the beloved “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” at WQED. During what Drumbore recalls as a wonderful chat, Rogers offered to divulge the three key elements of his success. He told an attentive Drumbore that the first element was to be kind. The second was to be kind. And the third? Be kind. Drumbore says this advice resonates Continued on 9
Ascension St. Vincent’s trains seminarians on hospital chaplaincy
Avera partnership brings mental health therapy into public schools
By JULIE MINDA
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
When Fr. Justino Moreno was a seminarian two years ago, he believed he was wellequipped to provide pastoral care to people who are sick and dying and their families. He had experienced the deaths of beloved grandparents, accompanied close family members through cancer treatment, and studied pastoral care in seminary. He felt prepared to provide spiritual support to his future parishioners. But after spending two months in a chaplain shadowing program at Ascension St. Vincent’s in Jacksonville, Florida, he found that hands-on experience — and the opportunity to process those experiences with the hospital’s spiritual care team — was essential to preparing him for priestly ministry. “I honestly was not expecting to learn so much as I did,” he said.
At five schools within the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, School District, Avera Health therapists are so embedded they know the teachers and counselors, and sometimes students in therapy greet them on the parking lot with hugs. “I saw my therapist today!” elementary and middle schoolers will shout to one another and their teachers, said Heidi Thomas. She is the program director who oversees five Avera therapists who each work full time in three elementary, one middle, and Thomas one high school in Sioux Falls. The pilot program, called Rooted in Schools, started in December, and is funded through the next three years, with the possibility to expand. The just over $1 million in funding is through the Seed for Success Foundation, a supporting
Continued on 8
Seminarian George Gilbert completes rounding at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida. A collaboration involving St. Vincent’s, the Diocese of St. Augustine and St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary enables seminarians to shadow members of the hospital’s chaplaincy team and in time conduct chaplaincy on their own.
TRINITY HEALTH IN MICHIGAN USES SAINT JOHN'S BIBLE TO ENGAGE PEOPLE IN SPIRITUAL FORMATION. PAGE 8
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COMFORT FOR CAREGIVERS: MINISTRY TENDS TO THOSE ON THE FRONT LINES When crisis strikes, Mercy team takes spiritual care to staff
Protocol 99 provides discreet support to first responders
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
By JULIE MINDA
After the suicide of a beloved, longtime Mercy caregiver, the system responded the best it knew how. The system’s leaders provided on-site counselors, engaged spiritual caregivers and referred those affected to the employee assistance program. But in that process, they realized there were some issues, said Patrick Dotson, director of the employee assistance pro-
Dotson
gram at Chesterfield, Missouri-based Mercy. Not everyone who was providing support knew how the others were responding. And some responses, though well intentioned, were not necessarily best
practices. Leaders challenged Dotson: How can we Continued on 7
First responders routinely experience highly stressful and traumatic situations that can tax their mental health and wellbeing, and yet — for fear of being stigmatized — they may delay or avoid seeking the care they need. On June 1, a Bon Secours Mercy Health facility in Western Ohio launched a service to address such barriers to care. Through
Protocol 99, first responders can get quick and discreet access to mental health support at Mercy Health — Dayton Springfield Emergency Center from specially trained clinicians. Helton “We wanted to offer this because we value (first responders) so much,” said Noel Helton, director of Continued on 11
A STUDY FOUND MORAL INJURY AMONG DOCTORS CARING FOR IMMIGRANT PATIENTS AMID HEIGHTENED NATIONAL ENFORCEMENT. PAGE 3