Mercy Hospital calls health commissioner home
When Mercy Sister Sheila Lyne, 64, Chicago’s health commissioner
for the last 10 years, steps down to take the top post at Mercy
Hospital and Medical Center Dec. 1, she will find some tough organizational
and financial challenges.
The hospital trimmed more than 180 employees from its payroll
after announcing in April that it had lost more than $31 million
and was losing about $4 million a month. Total losses for the
last fiscal year are estimated at about $40 million. For most
of the year, it has been operated by the consultant group Wellspring
Partnership.
But Lyne—who took over the city’s Department of Public Health
with no public health experience—is optimistic about the medical
center’s prognosis.
Lyne was raised on the South Side, attending Little Flower School
and Mercy High School before joining the congregation. After working
as a psychiatric nurse and nursing professor, she spent 15 years
leading Mercy before moving to the health department.
Catholic New World: Why did you decide to take the position as
health commissioner?
Sister Sheila Lyne: I had been at Mercy for about 15 years. When you’re at a position
for that long, you think maybe you’re looking at it too routinely.
Then when the mayor [Richard M. Daley] took office in ‘89, I ran
into him a couple of times when he was kind of lamenting that
he didn’t have a commissioner of health. I said at one point,
“Well, you know, maybe I could help. Maybe I could go over there
sometime and sort of go back and forth.”
I came in on the whole measles epidemic during 1990. That is when
I became more aware of the difference between public health and
acute care. So that’s kind of how I got this baptism by epidemic.
CNW: How did the job become permanent?
SSL: I called it part-time temporary for about eight months, and then
they started asking if I’d take the job for real, and that kind
of surprised me. I wasn’t really ready for that. It was a public
position, and I thought the Sisters of Mercy or the church might
have some problems with that. Although, years back, I had taught
at the University of Iowa. I had already talked to the cardinal
[Joseph Bernardin] about coming on a temporary basis, and he didn’t
have a problem with it.
When I went back to him to say that I’m taking it permanently
and our community agreed and wrote a letter of support, he got
a little concerned. I just had to explain what the Department
of Public Health is about. You know, the church always gets concerned
about abortion, right? We [the Department of Public Health] don’t
do it. What we do is if somebody comes in saying they think they
want to have an abortion, we give them a list of four places they
can go for counseling. Planned Parenthood admittedly is one, but
so is Catholic Charities one. We don’t have anything to do with
it. We don’t do tubal ligations because we don’t do inpatient—we’re
outpatient. We do do family planning and we do do contraceptives.
By that time, I had learned a fair amount about what I was getting
into. I was starting to understand somewhat about infant mortality,
HIV, vaccine-preventable diseases, that we inspect restaurants
for consumer safety, and then we have all these clinics. Back
then, we had about eight clinics. We have eight now, but we have
15 mental health clinics, so we have a lot of facilities out there.
CNW: With all that going on, why did you decide to apply for the
CEO position at Mercy?
SSL: That’s an interesting question. What I say is, I really did feel
called to put my name in. I might be a little disappointed if
they didn’t pick me, but it wasn’t that I was feeling like “I
want to get out of here, I want to go anywhere.” You know, Mercy,
I was there for so long. I was there for 20 years, from 1970 to
1991. It’s just part of my being. I was pretty uptight through
the process, most of the time not imagining that I would be leaving
here, frankly. But after it was offered to me, I began to settle,
and it feels right.
CNW: What are the challenges you’re going to face at Mercy?
SSL: Well, I think the newspapers have already published that. But
I have to say that I think the turnaround group that’s in charge
now has really made impressive gains in terms of reducing the
costs and improving the revenues. That whole financial thing got
pretty delicate. [The deficit] has been cut in half, easily. And
that group has a blueprint laid out about how things need to continue
to operate, and I’m committed to that. The other thing about Mercy
is that Mercy’s always been very strong in terms of the loyalty
of its employees and its physicians, and I certainly am depending
on that. When you have that, when you have people who really care
about it, they want to see the hospital coming out on top. It
feels right. I feel ready.
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