News and Announcements

The inaugural class of the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network (ICAHN) Rural Health Fellowship graduated 14 new Fellows on May 5 during ceremonies held at O’Shea University, Springfield.

Those honored included Kim Calvert, Erin Frank, and Lacey Stultz, all of Horizon Health, Paris; Joe Whitson, Hopedale Medical Complex, Hopedale; Raigan Brown, Emily Hendrickson, and Stephanie Meyers, all of Memorial Hospital, Carthage; Andrew Kleinschmidt, Wabash General Hospital, Mt. Carmel; Harold Calderon, Marshall Browning Hospital, Du Quoin; E. David Harrison, Hillsboro Area Hospital, Hillsboro; Deepanjali Dummi, Memorial Hospital, Chester; Arica Schmidt, Midwest Medical Center, Galena; and Susan Chenoweth, Illini Community Hospital, Pittsfield. Tracy Perkins, RN, also completed the class.

The eight-month ICAHN Rural Health Fellowship was designed for up-and-coming small, rural, and critical access hospital leaders. The experience covers four main pillars of thought: rural health, leadership, operations, and finance. Fellows participated in online learning, a service project, and a book club with the goal of developing confident leaders equipped with the skills needed to lead in a rural community.

Service projects are highlighted at: 2021 ICAHN Rural Health Fellows Project Development | Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network. They include projects on outpatient nursing services, department KPI, business intelligence, leadership onboarding, customer relationship management, speech recognition software and EMR implementation, integrated behavioral health, mental health services, improvement of outpatient arrival rates, continued quality improvement, creation of a specialty clinic, and cross department mentorship.

“Acquiring the knowledge and expertise needed to successfully take an idea and grow it into a project that will benefit rural healthcare is an important skill that the 2020-2021 ICAHN Fellows have gained,” said Kathy Fauble, ICAHN Professional Education Services Director. “The projects have been ambitious, impressive, and of great merit to their respective hospitals. Between the participants and the mentors, we have a roomful of lifelong learners with very bright futures.”

ICAHN will begin accepting applications for the 2021-2022 Rural Health Fellowship program in late summer.