Nearly a century after a women’s group founded Miriam Hospital, female execs write latest chapter
Almost 100 years ago, Miriam Hospital grew out of pennies and nickels
collected by a Jewish women’s group for needy patients. Over the next dozen
years, Miriam Society No. 1 began to talk about the need for a Jewish hospital
that would be open to the entire community.
By 1921, the group was able to put a deposit down on a group of four buildings on Parade Street, and after four years of renovations, the hospital opened its doors. After relocating to Summit Avenue in 1952, additions and new construction through the turn of this century have resulted in the Miriam that stands today.
It seems only fitting that in 2004 five female executives are guiding Miriam Hospital through a major reconstruction project over the next five years.
The $116-million project is probably the biggest venture the hospital has taken up since those early days of fund raising.
With a current bed count of only 208, the hospital has struggled with its patient load, as well as the oldest surgical suites in the state that have become a tight fit. Slated to begin this winter, the project will be completed in two phases with a new three-story building being built on either side of the hospital’s lobby.
Miriam’s executive team – President Kathleen Hittner, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Sandra Coletta, Chief Financial Officer Mamie Wakefield, Vice President of Patient Care and Chief Nursing Officer Rebecca Burke and Vice President of Support Services Sandra Cheng – have spent the bulk of their careers with the hospital and take pride in preparing the institution to serve yet another generation.
Hittner, who is also a medical doctor, joined Miriam in 1979 to work in cardiac anesthesia, and after serving as president of the hospital’s medical staff, took over as president four years ago when the decision was made to have separate physician-presidents head up the hospitals in Lifespan’s network (Miriam formed the network with Rhode Island Hospital in 1994). One of the few female doctors when she first started at Miriam, Hittner said she never imagined herself going the administrative route, but a variety of mentors over the years seemed to lead her along this path.
“We’re all very secure in our own right,” said Hittner, who’s quick to share credit for the hospital’s financial and patient care successes with the entire Miriam staff. “We don’t worry about accidentally bruising the egos of one another.”
According to the “Hospital Community Benefits Report (2003)” issued by the state Department of Health earlier this month, 43 percent of the state’s hospital’s senior administrative staffs (vice president positions and above) are female. That’s an increase from five years ago, when 35 percent of the top administrators were women.
While the five hesitate to say their gender translates into a different management style, they all talk about the importance of communication and interaction among the entire staff, as well as understanding that their employees have lives outside of their work.
“There’s a real understanding here that you’re dealing with a whole person when it comes to our staff,” Burke said. “There’s an emotional connection between the employees and I really think those relationships are visible to the patients.”
Burke said her career continues moving along the trajectory she always planned. She also took over her current job in early 1999, and including the couple of years she worked at Rhode Island Hospital in the early 1980s, has spent her entire career in the state.
“The Miriam has been good to me,” Burke said. “I’ve been lucky enough to have a very fulfilling career here. It’s nurtured me and I like to think I’m paying that back with loyalty and dedication.”
Coletta joined Miriam in 1999, after more than two decades as an internal auditor. Alongside Hittner, she has helped implement the strict set of standards outlined in the hospital’s Total Quality Management practices and – perhaps surprising from an accountant in an industry where the margins are so small – talks passionately about the need for quality patient care.
“We all have a set of values that we hold dearly,” Coletta said. “We’re all here, working in a very tough industry, after all. When I was working at a for-profit company, I sort of looked around one day and asked myself, ‘If I left, who was going to really care?’”
Along with tending to Miriam, Wakefield also splits her time between Rhode Island and Bradley hospitals. She joined Lifespan four years ago after spending 17 years as an auditor for KPMG, mostly working with clients in the health care field. After years of giving advice to clients, she said she was excited to leave the private world and see for herself whether it came down to good advice or good execution.
“Miriam has been a success in terms of negotiating to get the best reimbursement rates possible, and then spending those revenues in as efficient a way as possible,” Wakefield said. “That’s not an easy thing to do.” Miriam was among the most profitable of Rhode Island’s 13 community hospitals over the past three years.
Vice President of Support Services Sandra Cheng, originally a dietary, has been at Miriam for 16 years, the last three in her current position after relocating with her husband from Hong Kong by way of Texas. Though she is just one of two minorities working within the state’s senior hospital administrators, for Cheng, it’s all about making the patients comfortable, noting that the “devil’s in the details.”
“All these things you don’t usually think about, from parking to transportation, it can have a huge impact on the patient’s stay,” Cheng said. “A hospital has to really provide hotel services to people nowadays.”
Asked if it really makes any difference that Miriam is run by women, all reply it doesn’t, though Wakefield did make a pitch for diversity within an institution’s ranks.
“I suppose maybe it does, in that within a work force it’s good for people to be able to look up and see people who look like them and act like them and that a promotion is possible if they do good work,” Wakefield said.
And Coletta noted that the history of the institution remains in the minds of the staff.
“This hospital’s heritage is that it was a gift to the community and the people
of Rhode Island,” she said. “That’s a strong reason for being a woman and taking
pride in your work when you’re constantly seeing the granddaughters of those
women. There’s always a feeling that we’re involved in something that’s of a
longer-lasting importance.”
