by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | July 18, 2022
From the July 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
I left Cone, came back to Cone, and was a physician recruiter, so I helped physicians find their jobs. I moved into various vice president-level positions, helping to recruit positions into markets where we needed to improve access to care. Then I moved into being the president of Wesley Long Community Hospital, which is one of Cone’s facilities. And then I became a CEO of a rural community health system in Randolph County, and recently rejoined Cone as the president of Annie Penn.
HCB News: You have an extensive background in rural healthcare, which has been struggling in recent years. From your vantage point, what are the basic challenges impacting rural providers?
AO: I probably should also mention that that I did work for a home-care company for several years that also was partly owned by Cone. In that area, I was able to really learn about what happens in the home and how we provide services to patients outside of the hospital. That was helpful in understanding rural medicine, because a lot of the communities that I was privileged to serve were in rural communities where patients had home health. They might have durable equipment needs: wheelchairs, walkers, things like that. They might even have home infusion. And so I was able to see really what that looked like outside of the four walls of the hospital.
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Rural healthcare is really struggling right now, and I think that there's a big focus on what's happening in rural communities. The challenges are very complex. The ones that I see the most are around affordability of medicines, transportation to doctor’s appointments, access to primary care and being able to find a physician that's close to the patient's home. Many patients in rural communities have chronic comorbidities, or they may have more than one chronic condition, which makes it even more challenging, because they may have various specialists that are caring for them, or a variety of doctors that are caring for them, and they may have to travel to doctor’s appointments outside of their county. So it provides a challenge for patients to really manage their health.
In many rural communities, the socioeconomic status is lower than in urban markets and patients don't have insurance as much, so there's definitely a void of health coverage. All of these factors create an environment where the health system partners with the community to provide the most access to care that's possible.
HCB News: How would you describe the leadership style at Annie Penn?
