Catholic Health World

At the bedside and in the board room, Sr. Loftin cares for patients

Even after she traded the operating room for the conference room, Sr. Mary Frances Loftin, DC, never stopped caring for patients. She would make rounds with doctors, pray with families in waiting rooms and ask patients about their care.

"People would joke that I would snoop around," said Sr. Loftin, chairperson of Saint Thomas Health Services of Nashville, Tenn. "But I think it's very important to talk to patients and their families so they can tell me what they are thinking, what their concerns are. I learned a lot by making those rounds."

Sr. Loftin is a 2010 recipient of CHA's Lifetime Achievement Award for her service as a nurse, an administrator and a forceful advocate for health care for all.

"She is such a creative and strategic thinker who is devoted to find new ways to serve all people of the community," said Patrick Madden, president and chief executive of Saint Thomas Health Services. "She will work with any organization that is touching the poor. She always understood the importance of leveraging the institution she worked in to bring together other organizations to help the community's most vulnerable. When sister calls meetings, everyone comes because she has their respect."

Sr. Loftin has served as president and chief executive of both Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville and St. Vincent's Birmingham in Birmingham, Ala., both Ascension Health hospitals. She has received awards and recognition for her business skills in both communities. As a physician at St. Vincent's hospital once remarked, "Sr. Mary Frances could have been the CEO of IBM or General Motors."

In 1995, Sr. Loftin became the first woman to serve as chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Birmingham, directing daily operations and planning.

She channeled her business acumen to benefit the vulnerable. Sr. Loftin was a long-time member of the board of Cooper Green Mercy Hospital in Birmingham, an indigent care hospital. She started the Meals on Wheels Program for St. Vincent's Birmingham and she also was active on the board of a women's shelter in that community.

John D. O'Neil is president and chief executive of Birmingham-based St. Vincent's Health System, which, along with Saint Thomas Health Services, is part of St. Louis-based Ascension Health. O'Neil said that Sr. Loftin was instrumental in the creation of Ascension Health, the country's largest Catholic health system. Ascension Health is sponsored by four provinces of the Daughters of Charity, the Congregation of St. Joseph and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

While serving as president of the Daughters of Charity National Health System (which became Ascension Health in 1999), Sr. Loftin campaigned for universal health insurance coverage for all Americans, an initiative that found expression in historic health reform legislation passed this year and that thrives as part of Ascension Health's continuing campaign to promote 100 percent access to health care and health coverage in the U.S.

"So much a part of my life as a Daughter of Charity is making sure there is not a difference in the care of the poor and the needy," Sr. Loftin said. "Catholic health care is a model to the rest of the nation. One of the things I was most proud of was that we could influence health care throughout the country. I do believe Catholic health care has done that, and I wouldn't be interested in it if that weren't the case. Justice, care of the poor, the standards we have set for financial care of the poor — we have been very influential."

Sr. Loftin grew up in DeFuniak Springs, a small town in the Florida panhandle. She had her first experience with nursing at age 11, when her father fell ill with Brill's Disease, a form of typhus.

"He was very sick, and some people in our hometown had already died from it," recalled Sr. Loftin. "I would bring him orange juice and try to forget what happened to the other people. He got well and led a very active life. That was a real inspiration for me."

Family tragedy also influenced Sr. Loftin's decision to become a nurse. When she was young, her mother delivered two stillborn babies. "It was terribly sad," Sr. Loftin said. "It made me want to understand why things like that happen. I think I was a better OB nurse because of that."

A Daughter of Charity since 1952, Sr. Loftin also worked as a surgical and pediatric nurse before studying health care administration. Madden remembers meeting Sr. Loftin shortly after she was named president of the Daughters of Charity National Health System. Sr. Loftin vowed to visit every ministry, including Madden's poor upstate New York hospital, which she saw in the dead of winter.

"She wanted to hear what every person had to say. That is her gift — her ability to listen," Madden said. "When you talk about some place, she knows what you're talking about because she's been there."

Madden says one of Sr. Loftin's greatest contributions is helping Ascension Health's board shift to lay leadership while maintaining the core values of the religious sponsors who founded its ministries.

"She has prepared Ascension Health for this major transformation," said Madden. "People, when they are around her and they see her actions, they're inspired and they know what it means when we talk about our Catholic charism."

Upon hearing Madden's comments, a humble Sr. Loftin added, "The only way I've been able to keep the mission alive is to try to live it."

Copyright © 2010 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
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