Mary Haynes

President and CEO, Nazareth Home Inc.

Category: Innovator

Years in the industry: 31

Years at current position: 21

Hometown: Marrowbone, Kentucky

Lives: Prospect

Hobbies: Entertaining, learning and history

Describe your job and your responsibilities.

Leadership and strategy development for a long-term care health care organization founded in Catholic values.

What advancement in health care are you most looking forward to?

Continuity and choice. I expect at all points across the health care continuum significant breaks exist, but we see personal needs for coordination of chronic conditions as we seek to put the pieces together for elders, patients, and families.

We need to address choice and the only way to have a real choice in treatment is clear information about conditions. We have a long way to go here in our aging culture where specialty medicine is routine. The World Health Organization says one out of two people are ageist.

The impact of ageism in our culture impacts health care for those who are aged, and it impacts the health care organizations such as ours that are solely for aged people.

What is your top goal for 2023?

Growth in partnerships with like-minded organizations to improve and sustain our person-centered mission to aging families.

What is your most memorable, career-defining moment?

Career defining moments are learning moments. My greatest learnings are from listening to elders, family members, staff, patients who tell me what I need to know to make our environment and services better.

My experiences have taught me the value of truth in relationship development. There are many times when it has taken a lot of courage to present the truth in a crucial conversation, but the reward is almost always there.

To you, what makes someone a health care hero?

A passion that fuels persistence. There are few human endeavors where the return on investment is quick.

Change is a process and impacts on a system such as health care, and certainly long-term care with its regulations and prescriptions takes passion, persistence and comfort with risk. Doing well within the system is more easily mastered than taking a risk to step out.

My hat is off to those who push for change that helps the individual served as well as helping the organization.

What makes you hopeful about the future of health care in our community?

My hope is always in people reaching a point where they push the system for change. The pandemic and its impact on the workforce have given us a clear message of the value of the team member. Without engaged team members, the greatest technical or clinical improvement cannot be realized.