Kettering Health Network
Operates eight hospitals in Butler, Green and Miami counties
2,000 physicians
10,000 total workforce
56,182 patient discharges
203,230 emergency department visits
932,434 outpatient visits
$29.9 million free or discounted health services
$1 billion annual operating revenue
Premier Health Partners
Operates five hospitals in Butler, Miami and Montgomery counties
2,333 physicians
14,595 total workforce
80,145 patient discharges
285,516 emergency department visits
932,434 outpatient visits
$134 million free or discounted health services
$1.8 billion annual operating revenue
Children’s Medical Center of Dayton
Operates one hospital and several centers and clinics in Allen, Clark, Greene, Montgomery and Warren counties
251 physicians
1,866 total workforce
6,744 patient discharges
72,758 emergency department visits
57,227 outpatient visits
$11 million free or discounted health services
$212.3 million annual operating revenue
Mary Boosalis
Title: Executive vice president and chief executive officer, Premier Health Partners
Previous experience: President and CEO, Miami Valley Hospital; executive vice president and chief operating officer, Miami Valley Hospital; vice president of hospital operations, Miami Valley Hospital
Education: Bachelor's degree in nursing, California State University in Fresno, Calif.; master's degree in hospital services administration, Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.
Residence: Dayton
Eloise Broner
Title: President and CEO, Good Samaritan Hospital, Dayton
Previous experience: Chief operating officer, Good Samaritan Hospital; vice president of operations, Miami Valley Hospital; chief purchasing officer, Premier Health Partners
Education: Bachelor's degree, Indiana University; master's degree in public health, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn.; Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives
Residence: Washington Township
Terri Day
Title: President, Kettering Health Network
Previous experience: Executive vice president of operations, Kettering Health Network; vice president of Adventist Health in Roseville, Calif.; vice president of hospital finance with financial oversight for six Adventist hospitals in central and southern California; chief financial officer for Loma Linda (Calif.) University Medical Center
Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Calif., certified public accountant
Residence: Kettering
Deborah Feldman
Title: President and CEO, Children's Medical Center of Dayton
Previous experience: Montgomery County Administrator for 15 years and 30-year veteran as administrator of Montgomery County
Education: Bachelor's in political science, Miami University; master's degree in public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University
Residence: Kettering
Bobbie Gerhart
Title: President and CEO, Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton
Previous experience: Executive vice president and chief operating officer, Miami Valley Hospital; vice president, chief purchasing officer, Premier Health Partners; vice president of operations, Good Samaritan Hospital; cardiology service line director, Good Samaritan Hospital
Education: Associate degree in nursing, Sinclair Community College; bachelor's degree in business and health administration, St. Joseph's College, Standish, Maine; master's degree in health administration, Kennedy Western University
Residence: Springboro
Jennifer Swenson
Title: President, Fort Hamilton Hospital, Hamilton
Previous experience: Chief operating officer (2009) and vice president for finance (2004), St. Helena Hospital, Clearlake, Calif.
Education: Bachelor's degree, Pacific Union College, Angwin, Calif.; member of the Health Financial Management Association and the American College of Healthcare Executives
Residence: Springboro
Carol Turner
Title: President and CEO, Atrium Medical Center, Middletown
Previous experience: Chief operating officer (1999-2010), Atrium/Middletown Regional Hospital: she also held positions as vice president of clinical and informational services (1986-99), director of professional services (1985-86), administrative technologist and clinical laboratory (1980-85).
Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Dayton; master's degree, Central Michigan University; fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives
Residence: Springboro
The Dayton regional is well ahead of the national average for women heading up hospitals, and experts credit a family-friendly community as well as a strong tradition of women leaders at local faith-based hospitals.
In the Greater Dayton region, five of 13 hospitals in Butler, Greene, Miami and Montgomery counties are helmed by women, or 38 percent, in contrast with 18 percent nationwide.
With her appointment last week as the first woman president of the 48-year-old Kettering Health Network, Terri Day became one of three area health care network chiefs, that include Fred Manchur, the network’s chief executive officer; and Jim Pancoast, president and CEO of Premier Health Partners. Nationally, a mere 4 percent of health care companies are headed by women.
Day joins the ranks of high-powered female health care executives including Mary Boosalis, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Premier Health Partners; Eloise Broner, president and CEO of Good Samaritan Hospital; Deborah Feldman, president and CEO of Children’s Medical Center of Dayton; Bobbie Gerhart, president and CEO of Miami Valley Hospital; Jennifer Swenson, president of Fort Hamilton Hospital in Hamilton; and Carol Turner, president and CEO of Atrium Medical Center in Middletown.
“It puts us on the map nationally,” said Dr. Marjorie Bowman, who was recently tapped as the first woman to serve as dean of the Boonshoft College of Medicine at Wright State University. She is one of 18 female deans out of some 150 medical schools nationwide.
“When I was being interviewed, it didn’t feel like my gender was important and that felt very good,” said Bowman, who came to Wright State from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “During my last job, it was still very clear that I was a woman, and I was still proving things relating to gender issues.”
Evolving attitudes explain part of that difference, but not all. “I think it’s partly because people in Dayton are open and warm and very welcoming,” she said.
Feldman, a veteran of Montgomery County government who spent 15 years as its administrator, noted “the Dayton community is one that is very accepting and one that values its local talent. It’s a place where people who are competent and who work hard can get ahead, and that benefits women.”
Day attributed also the phenomenon in part to the Miami Valley’s family-friendly atmosphere, in marked contrast to southern California, where she raised her two children. “In California, I never drove less than an hour to get somewhere,” she said. “Here, there is little traffic and the schools are good. It’s very easy to go to your children’s events, which is not possible if you’re traveling long commutes. Dayton has a lot for families and that is very significant.”
Rising to the CEO suite
Feldman, who raised her children here, said she has had flexibility to balance work and family.“This is a very easy place to live and to get around, to juggle child care and the office, and that’s probably even more beneficial to women,” she said. “The pressures of life aren’t as intense, whether in terms of time or money or support.”
Day said that her husband, Timothy, made it possible for her to pursue a high-powered career when he quit his job as an accountant for a Big Eight firm to stay home with their children, Andrew, now 24, and Nicole, 22. It was very much of a team effort and the hospital was the children’s favorite hangout. “I was extremely lucky to have the backup when I needed to travel,” she said. “For many women, the biggest obstacle is the single-mindedness that is needed to succeed.”
Being able to make it quickly to and from doctor’s appointments and school activities is a tremendous plus for the Dayton area, Day said. She did not have to worry about relocating her grown children when she first moved to Kettering several years ago, but it was still painful to leave her then 19-year-old daughter behind in Australia. “The struggle for work and family balance will never end for me,” she admitted.
The glass ceiling still exists in health care, according to Bowman and others. “It may be more because of unconscious bias than deliberate discrimination,” she said. “When candidates have the same qualifications, there may be a tendency to fall back on old stereotypes.”
The leadership lag is puzzling to analysts, because the health care field has traditionally been dominated by women. Nationally, 71 percent of managers are female, but health care lags behind the workforce as a whole when it comes to top women executives. Nationally, 24 percent of all CEOs are female, compared to 18 percent in hospitals, and 4 percent in health care companies.
Broner pointed out that most health care workers are women, including 91 percent of registered nurses. “It’s a female-dominated industry, so it makes perfect sense to see more women in those leadership roles,” she said.
Swenson said that health care is a great platform for women to move into management: “A significant number of nurses are female, and there’s a management structure that they can move up into, and once you assume that role, if you go back for business or finance training, you’ve got that opportunity to move into the CEO suite.”
Swenson and Broner both started on the finance side of the health care business. Day started out as accountant who specialized in working with hospitals and universities. Others worked their way up from the patient care side. Turner, president and CEO of Atrium Medical Center, started out working as a phlebotomist — a technician who draws blood samples to be used for a variety of medical tests — while attending college. Boosalis and Gerhart both started out as nurses.
And Feldman left her job as Montgomery County administrator to become president and CEO of Children’s Medical Center of Dayton — her first job in the health care industry.
Religion and health care
Many analysts believe the tide is turning in health care as more women head into management training programs and into medical school. In Xavier University’s graduate health services administration program, 53 percent of the students earning their master’s degrees are women, said program director Dr. Nancy Linenkugel, a Catholic nun.
From a historical perspective, Linenkugel said it makes perfect sense to see more women running hospitals: Until modern times, many hospitals were run by nuns or other women in religious orders. That might help explain the ascendancy of women locally in health care: Good Samaritan Hospital, which is operated by Premier Health Partners, is in partnership with Catholic Health Initiatives while Kettering Health Network is operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
That is also the case at the Springfield-based Community Mercy Health Partners, founded by the Catholic nuns of the Sisters of Mercy. “It is religious women who have been the leaders, and they are the role models in continuing leadership positions,” observed Marianne Potina, who, as vice president of mission integration, serves as part of the seven-member senior management team. “I go home tired every night, and I can’t wait to get back to work the next morning. I don’t believe there are limitations facing today’s young women.”
Linenkugel’s order, the Sisters of St. Francis, operates a health care system that includes 14 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois. At Dayton’s Good Samaritan Hospital, the first eight top executives were nuns, and the Franciscan Sisters founded the old St. Elizabeth Hospital in Dayton in 1878 and continued to lead it until its closure in 2000.
“You look across the U.S., and many hundreds of Catholic hospitals were founded by women who were nuns,” Linenkugel said. Until the 1970s, she added, most of the students in the graduate program she now runs were Catholic nuns: “These religious women were top executives, and I think they’ve set some trends for women today to follow.”
As consumers, women drive most decisions about health care, Swenson said. “Women make most of the health care decisions in families. Women have been the primary caregivers historically in the home. A lot of us have dealt with the health care industry as consumers. In management, we bring balance to the table,” she said.
It is hard to pinpoint a single factor why fewer women nationally make it to those top jobs in health care, according to Karen Kent, visiting professor at Xavier University’s health services administration graduate program who worked in management at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
“There are more women in college now, more women in medical school,” she said. “We’re outnumbering men at all the key points. But I think we’re struggling with the work and life balance and the caregiving role that we have assumed. Healthcare is a 24/7 business, and it’s hard to find flexibility in those management jobs. That creates roadblocks to moving up.”
She took four years off to raise young children and help care for her aging parents. “The interruption meant I probably couldn’t ever get back to where I’d been in terms of pay,” Kent said. “We still have to make choices about career and family. Many of the women I know in the executive ranks had to make those choices. When I decided to take a break, I had men and women telling me I was making a mistake. I even got criticized by my father, who was in his 80s at the time.”
On-the-job preparation
Turner, Boosalis and Gerhart believe their experience in the trenches makes them better leaders.
“It takes you into different levels of management,” said Turner. “As CEO, I can talk to staff level employees, and say, ‘I can remember what it was like to work nights. I can remember what it was like to work weekends. I remember what it was like to be at the bottom of the ladder.’ I don’t ever want to lose sight of that.”
Boosalis liked nursing, but she said that moving into management allowed her to focus on improving patient care system-wide. After earning her degree in nursing, she attended graduate school for her master’s degree in health services administration. “It’s great that we’re women and all, but if you don’t get the results, it really doesn’t matter,” she said.
Gerhart said her nursing experience gives her greater credibility with her staff. “We represent the majority of our employees, who are women, in a way that is special,” she said. “Frankly, I’ve been surprised at the number of our employees who give us credit not just because we’re women, but because we do have the clinical background and can relate to the core mission and business of the organization.”
The health care industry is in a time of massive transformation, and local executives and experts say that women are well-suited to lead that transformation. “It’s hard to generalize, but women have a leadership style that may be a bit more inclusive in some cases,” Feldman said. “That’s positive for the health care industry at a time when collaborations are more important than ever.”
After her promotion last week, Day said many Kettering employees told her: “It’s great to see a woman with the title of president.”
She added, “I take a lot of pride in being a role model. I do take a special interest in women who work here and helping to mentor them and to balance work and family.”
Diversity matters not only to employees but also to patients, Feldman said: “In health care the consumer is very diverse and women are often the decision makers. You are much closer to your customer when you have that diversity in terms or race, age, gender, or parts of the country. If you don’t understand your customer, you don’t succeed.”
Linenkugel said that women possess skills that are essential in the current market, including teamwork and communications skills. “Health care is being transformed to make all of these institutions circle around the patient,” she said. “Who’s good at collaborating, bringing people together, working in partnerships? Women are good at that. We’re good at getting on board and transforming systems. This is the world our graduates are going into. The health care of the future, I believe, will be very favorable to women.”
In Dayton, at least, it is becoming far less lonely at the top. “It’s great having company,” Feldman said.
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