This week, Berkshire Health Systems – the county’s largest private healthcare provider – announced that President and CEO David Phelps will leave the company in early 2022 after 28 years in the position. His successor will be Executive Vice President Darlene Rodowicz, making her the company’s first female chief executive.
Rodowicz spoke with WAMC about her experience at the company, the unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and her goals for Berkshire Health Systems.
RODOWICZ: I actually started out here in one of the staff positions in the organization over in our finance department, worked my way through the finance division, ultimately becoming the chief financial officer. And was also, in that role, able to take on a lot of projects that broadened my horizons, especially in our physician practices, retail pharmacy, various areas that was much more than just the traditional finance work. The last two years have really been focused a lot on the operations of the Executive Vice President for the health system as well.
WAMC: Now, members of the board have talked about your leadership in the organization during the COVID 19 pandemic. What exactly, what kind of role did you play in that effort? And can you sort of walk us through a little bit about what your experience was like in BHS during what had to have been a very trying time for the company?
Well, you know, as you might recall, we were the first hospital in the state to have COVID positive patients that we were able to identify thanks to the persistence of one of our infectious disease physicians. And so we found ourselves standing up a command center here at the hospital and the health system and working with the state initially to prove that our own employees hadn't created the outbreak. But in the beginning, it was an issue of acquiring appropriate PPE and safeguards to protect our patients as they continued to provide care to these individuals and to protect other patients in the hospital as well. So we were always looking at supplies, negative pressure rooms, all the sourcing of anything in the supply chain- That seems like a distant history. Testing was always an issue for us as well. At the time, we had to work with the state who then had to get approval from the federal government to perform a test, and then we had to work with vendors to get testing capabilities. And then we had delays in turnaround times, ultimately developing our own testing capabilities. Additional staff, we had to find travel staff quickly, because we had to quarantine our own staff when the state thought that we had initiated the virus amongst our own workforce, which proved not to be the case, but at the time they didn't know that. So, there were a lot of things that we had to handle. And then you know, and an abbreviated, almost a complete halt of services that were going on while we were trying to also maintain a workforce and be sure that that workforce was there for us and for the community, even though volume was dropping off precipitously. So it was a lot of orchestrating issues and coming to quick resolution in how to proceed both to provide care and to keep our staff as safe as possible with a completely unknown virus that became a world pandemic.
As you step into this new position, how much of the responsibilities are going to be around the continued response to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic?
I think it'll be it'd be one of many things that we're working on. We need to continue to advance the organization around this pandemic, and be sure that we're here for our community and for our employees as well. So we're already doing that, where we're working on advancing the organization, looking at things like surgical schedules, for example, and how to run our surgical services more efficiently while we're still managing the pandemic. So it’s still business as usual and the pandemic is becoming part of the work that we have to incorporate.
Looking back on the legacy of your predecessor, Mr. Phelps, what are your thoughts on his leadership? What are the things that you want to hold on to and where are areas you want to further expand beyond what he did?
Yeah, I'm incredibly grateful to have worked with Dave for so many years and for all that he's done for this organization. It's a much stronger organization than it was when he began his career, and a lot to be proud about. We have wonderful employees and caregivers who do amazing work every single day. We're able to make the necessary investments in our facilities and our equipment and our people to be able to continue to advance the health system. So I want to make sure that we're always able to do that. I'm forever grateful in the foundation that Dave has created while he was here as a leader. I want to continue to build upon that, and I think in the future, there's a lot of work that we'll be doing, and not only advancing the care that we provide, but also thinking differently about how we engage with the community and their health and wellness.
Now, this does make you the first female CEO in Berkshire Health Systems’ history. What does that mean to you?
In some ways, I hope that's a little irrelevant, and what's really important is that I'm a capable individual who can fulfill the role of regardless of gender.
When you look at relations between the hospital and its staff, there tends to be this ongoing back and forth between the organized labor workers with the hospital and BHS on any number of issues. Any hopes or thoughts for that ongoing conversation as you step into the highest echelon of leadership at BHS?
You know, we always want to have a good relationship with our employees, whether they're represented by a bargaining unit or not. And we work really hard at having those kinds of relationships. Of course, when you get into negotiating sessions, sometimes things don't always go the way either party wants. And so we're going to do our best to try and make it through these negotiations without any issues. At the end of the day, you don't really know how it's going to turn out depending upon where both sides find themselves, but it's our goal to have a good working relationship. And in between bargaining sessions, we tend to succeed at them. And we're honored about that. And we should always remember to keep our employees and our relationships with our employees separate from what may indeed transpire with one of our bargaining units. But at the end of the day, we've got terrific employees that are here taking care of the community.
Lastly, what do you see as your number one hit list item when you get into the position? What's the first thing you want to do?
Well, I think the first thing we want to do is to continue to make sure that we don't have any disruption in the services that we are providing. And I'm grateful to Dave and the board for this transition plan that we don't have a long gap of uncertainty. It allows us to continue to move forward. And in our strategic plan, we're looking at improving access in our physician practices, and improving scores around areas of patient experience and always monitoring and enhancing our quality outcomes as well.
