Verity Healthcare

Since turning into president of Bangor, Maine-based St. Joseph Healthcare in 2011, Mary Prybylo, MSN, RN, has championed initiatives to enhance neighborhood well being each inside and outdoors hospital partitions. 

Ms. Prybylo will retire Could 1 as president of the 112-bed hospital and as senior vp of Andover, Mass.-based Covenant Well being.

Group hospitals, particularly in rural communities, are the spine of the U.S. healthcare system, Ms. Prybylo instructed Becker’s. Considered one of her proudest achievements has been reinforcing St. Joseph’s function as a neighborhood hospital.

“I’ve all the time believed that you have to sit in your doorstep and look out to see what the problems are, and that the neighborhood owns our hospital,” she mentioned. “We at the moment are often called a convener and an integrator. We will not clear up all the issues of our neighborhood, however we will actually carry folks collectively across the desk.”

Ms. Prybylo’s philosophy and dedication to the neighborhood have been mirrored in her convening of a neighborhood well being management board and the event of the Sexual Assault and Forensic Examiner nursing program, which ensures 24/7 entry to nurses skilled to look after victims of violence.

She additionally helped type an accountable care group — Group Care Partnership of Maine — which is independently operated, not like many different ACOs, she mentioned. Ms. Prybylo mentioned the group serves as an necessary assist community for neighborhood hospitals and federal high quality well being facilities all through Maine.

Increasing age-friendly care

Positioned within the state with the oldest inhabitants within the U.S., St. Joseph has strengthened its main and specialty care community beneath Ms. Prybylo’s management, bettering entry for older adults. The hospital has additionally developed a hub-and-spoke mannequin to assist rural communities, addressing excessive morbidity and mortality charges in these areas.

Ms. Prybylo will proceed specializing in age-friendly care after her retirement. She is about to finish her PhD in nursing in August, with analysis centered on enhancing look after older adults.

Her analysis examines how sufferers’ self-reported well being assessments — gathered throughout Medicare wellness visits — can function a predictive instrument. Analysis has proven that sufferers with decrease self-reported well being assessments have a a lot decrease life expectancy than these with excessive self-assessments.

“My analysis focuses on making an attempt to make use of that as a danger stratifier, virtually as one other very important signal, to have the ability to assess sufferers and develop a plan of care,” she mentioned. 

Ms. Prybylo can even stay concerned with the Group Care Partnership of Maine as its chief analysis and innovation officer. The group is collaborating with Philadelphia-based College of Pennsylvania to implement and adapt its transitional care administration mannequin for rural communities with restricted entry to nurses. The pilot program, set to launch in March, goals to offer higher care coordination for sufferers with power circumstances throughout the care continuum.

Management recommendation

Reflecting on her profession, Ms. Prybylo mentioned nice management comes right down to instilling a way of objective in groups.

“When you do not seize the hearts and minds of the folks that you just’re working with, they don’t seem to be going to comply with what you are telling them to do,” she mentioned.

All through her tenure, and particularly throughout the pandemic, Ms. Prybylo noticed firsthand the flexibleness and innovation of healthcare employees, in addition to the heavy burdens they carry.

“All the time concentrate on what challenges the workers has, significantly direct caregivers,” she mentioned. “Acknowledge that your workforce is made up of people who carry a whole lot of burdens, and so they’re nonetheless coming into work day by day and doing an exceptional job. We have to assist them in that work, but in addition in totality, by way of their lives.”