From the July 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


We've recently opened an urgent care center in Reidsville as part of Cone Health, which is much needed, and that provides a better venue for patients that don't have acute emergent conditions, but it provides an alternative location to the emergency room. We're going to be working to expand telehealth and providing virtual visits to our patients and the community. We're also recruiting another medical oncologist for our cancer center, expanding our cancer program.

HCB News: What kind of advantages come with being a member of Cone Health?
AO: Cone is a nationally-known institution for high quality. What I love about Cone is that it values really high-quality care and really values putting the patient at the center of what we do. I have the privilege of working with extremely talented clinicians, and very, very talented individuals, who are very dedicated to the healthcare industry. It allows me to wake up every day feeling inspired to serve not only in the industry, but right here in Reidsville.
HCB News: You took on your new role, at least in an interim capacity, in August. Has anything about the hospital or position surprised you over these several months?
AO: I was really surprised and inspired by, when I got here in August, the commitment of the team here to respond to the Delta variant for COVID. When I started, the Delta variant was at its height, and we moved from Delta to Omicron. Up until the Delta surge, we were able to partner with our larger hospitals within the market to transfer our patients to another hospital to be admitted. Cone operated a COVID facility in Greensboro and, due to various reasons, that facility closed. It required our hospital, along with the other hospitals within the Cone network, to ramp up to accept and admit COVID-positive patients. When I got here in August, we were in the midst of doing that, and it required a lot of immediate response and commitment to learn new skills and to really change the way we provide inpatient care. I was able to immediately jump in and become part of the operational team to make that happen here.

Then we moved on to Omicron, and so we began to see more and more positive COVID patients here at Annie Penn. Our skills began to increase, and our numbers of COVID admissions began to increase. I was surprised and I was inspired to see this hospital really rise to the occasion and challenge itself to be able to provide care to the patients that really needed it and to keep them local while they were fighting this virus.

July 2022 Magazine

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