Catholic Health World Articles

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 corner of the campus making the daily check of equipment that runs the hospital: boilers, water tanks, air handlers, and more.

"Talk about walk a mile," said Heinzman, who took a selfie with the plant operations employee escorting her when they reached the hospital roof.

The Walk a Mile in Your Shoes program, which started in fall 2023, puts executives on the front lines of daily hospital work. Once a quarter, they visit a new department for two to four hours, asking and answering questions, observing, and getting to know the workers. The employees, in turn, get to meet the executives and tell them about their work, including its challenges.

SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital and SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis also offer the Walk a Mile program.

"The intent is not to critique and find problems and errors or anything like that. It's not to criticize," said Barbara Gowler, the director of human resources for SSM Health Illinois. "It's to really understand the work that people are doing."

Selfies and shares
Gowler arranges the Walk a Mile encounters in Illinois. The executives often dress the part, setting aside business attire for scrubs. Gowler asks each executive to write a short reflection of their visit, and the communications team often posts those thoughts and photos to social media.

The posts, like the roof selfie, usually get lots of likes and shares, further spreading the news — and positivity.

"This is great leadership Damon!" reads a comment on a post about Damon Harbison's visit to the switchboard and security departments at the Mount Vernon and Centralia hospitals. Harbison is president of both. Photos showed him getting "arrested" by a security officer and answering phones at the switchboard.

"Wow!" Harbison wrote in the post. "The switchboard operators have to be on their toes at all times. There were multiple times during my shadowing that four to five actions were happening at the same time. There are multiple steps that are crucial to handle in a very short time period. Thank you for your dedication!"

'Take care of your people'
One May morning at the hospital in Mount Vernon, three executives shadowed employees in three departments.

Mark Williams, the regional director of mission integration, visited the labor and delivery unit. He has come to this floor before, once during a snowstorm to deliver bottles of windshield de-icer to employees.

Liz Daab, the director of the women's center and Williams' tour guide, said when she mentioned his visit to the staff, they asked, "Is that the guy that brought the de-icer for our cars?"

Williams said a member of the Felician Sisters of North America, the order that has co-sponsored SSM Health in Illinois, once told him: "You gotta take care of your people."

"That has really made long, happy careers in both (Illinois) hospitals, this sense that this is how we do things around here, and we take care of our own," he added.

In the labor and delivery unit, Daab showed Williams a bulletin board decorated with bright paper flowers and leaves, each bearing the first name, birthdate and footprint of a baby born there in May. She showed off a delivery room and the level two nursery for babies in need of extra care. She explained that babies who need more specialized care would go to SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, about 80 miles away.

"If you had a million dollars, what would you change?" asked Williams.

"Oh, we might need a couple million," said Daab. "But real, amazing birth centers have labor tubs. It gives that spa feel. Get a tub in every room. I don't know if the doctors would even be OK with it, but I think it would be great."

Williams said on a previous visit to the surgery department, he was struck by the warmth shown by the caregivers as they treated patients who were sedated or otherwise unable to know what was going on. "There's for them a kind of private pleasure, that some of the kindnesses they extended were known only to them and to God," he said. "I had not anticipated something so beautiful."

The patient experience
In the imaging center, Regional Vice President of Operations Hollie Colle chatted with employees, many of whom she knew already, as a colleague and as a patient. Weeks earlier, she had a CT scan here that detected an 8-millimeter kidney stone, which she had removed the next day.

"Look how big that is," said Randy Shields, regional director of imaging services, as they both peered at a scan of the stone. "That's a honker, Hollie. I can't believe you were walking around with that."

They laughed. Colle said she had "excellent service" at the hospital as a patient. She also knows running the imaging center is a delicate balance of scheduling and staffing equipment available to provide care such as mammograms and MRIs.

"We want to be able to see as many patients as quickly as possible," she said. "And these guys, they're so dedicated to the mission. Our patient satisfaction scores for this department alone, they're always 100%. They provide the best care. So you can tell they live the mission here."

High-tech and low-tech solutions
Heinzman is used to visiting the Mount Vernon hospital's community pharmacy as a customer, but on this morning, she stood behind the counter as supervisor Michell Ellis and pharmacy technician lead Lacey Braddy filled prescriptions.

Heinzman, a pharmacist by training, helps make decisions on the things that keep the hospital running. She helped decide to purchase an Eyecon 9430 for the pharmacy. The machine, which resembles an old-fashioned overhead projector, scans and counts pills placed on a tray, identifying incorrect ones and keeping track of transactions. It saves time and helps with accountability and accuracy.

"It's nice to know that when we buy stuff, that it's good and it works well, that it just doesn't sit in a corner and collect dust," said Heinzman.

Heinzman appreciates the Walk a Mile program for the opportunity to learn and help if she can. Once, she learned the environmental services worker she was shadowing had to go to another floor two or three times a day to retrieve a ladder to clean curtains. The ladder the worker normally used had gone missing. Heinzman made sure the worker got a replacement.

"It wasn't a major ordeal, but it was frustrating to them," she said. "I don't know that we're making earth-shattering observations, but when people say, 'Oh, we need this or that,' it's just good to understand."