Career Pulse

NORTHAMPTON — Janet O’Connor has joined the Cooley Dicksinon Hospital Cancer Care program as clinical nurse director.

O’Connor comes to Cooley Dickinson from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center at Faulkner Hospital, where she was the director of Nursing and Clinical Services. Before that, she held a variety of staff and management positions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

During her time at Dana Farber/Brigham and Women’s, O’Connor participated in the process that combined the two facilities’ cancer programs. “The process I went through at DF/BWCC is similar to what is planned for the expansion of the Cooley Dickinson Cancer Care program in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center,” she said. “Our goal is to continue to work toward an environment of quality, safety, excellence, and healing for patients, family, and staff.”

O’Connor has earned a variety of degrees and certifications, including a bachelor’s in Nursing from from UMass Amherst and a master’s in Health Administration from Simmons College.

Starting this fall, CDH and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center will bring expanded and cutting-edge oncology services to the Pioneer Valley through the Mass General Cancer Center at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. The new venture will substantially broaden the depth and breadth of cancer services at CDH, which has collaborated with the Mass General Cancer Center since 2009.

In 2015, the Mass General Cancer Center at Cooley Dickinson will relocate to a new facility in the North Building of Cooley Dickinson’s Locust Street campus.

LENOX — The American College of Health Care Administrators recently honored Sandra Shepard, executive director of Kimball Farms, with the 2014 Eli Pick Facility Leadership Award. The leadership award was celebrated during the awards luncheon at ACHCA’s 48th annual Convocation and Exposition in Las Vegas.

 “The team at Kimball Farms is committed to excellence, and I’m honored to accept this award on behalf of all our staff members,” Shepard said. “It is their hard work, intense pride in the quality of care, and customer service that enabled me to receive this award. We hold each other accountable to the highest standards and ensure that we all represent Kimball Farms well in each and every interaction with others.”

Shepard was one of 234 receipts who received the Eli Pick Facility Leadership Award. Based on the premise that facility excellence is a reflection of leadership excellence, the award recognizes the administrator who provided that leadership throughout the award year. Eligibility is based on three years of skilled-nursing-facility survey data, including health, life-safety, and compliance surveys, as well as top-quartile performance on designated quality measures. The criteria also includes an 80{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or greater facility occupancy and a three-year avoidance of ‘special focus facility’ status.

This honor is the most recent in a series of accomplishments by Kimball Farms that includes the Gold Excellence in Quality award, three recent perfect surveys from the Department of Public Health, the American Healthcare Assoc. National Silver Quality Award, and scores in the top 1{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} in the nation for customer and workforce satisfaction, as measured by My InnerView and National Research Corp.

Kimball Farms Nursing Care Center is part of the Kimball Farms Life Care Continuing Care Retirement Community in Lenox, a member of Berkshire Healthcare. For more information, visit www.kimballfarms.org.

LONGMEADOW — Donna McElroy-Routhier has been named director of Nursing at the Julian J. Leavitt Family Jewish Nursing Home, located on the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Campus of Jewish Geriatric Services (JGS), a leading healthcare system serving seniors and their families.

Routhier is responsible for managing and hiring more than 200 professional staff, including RNs, LPNs, CNAs, and part-time and per diem employees. She also oversees daily operations of the nursing department, ensuring compliance with Department of Public Health regulations.

Most recently, Routhier was director of Nursing for Merrimac Health in Webster. “Donna’s many years of management and clinical accomplishments will not only help us further a long tradition of quality care in the nursing home, but also will help us transform the care we deliver as we adopt the small-house model of care, which is a more home-like approach to elder care,” said Martin Baicker, president and CEO of JGS.

Added Routhier, “I have been in long-term care most of my career, and I’m looking forward to working with this wonderful, compassionate, and skilled team as we change the way we care for people here. I really believe in the small-house model of care because I think it’s the way we should all be cared for as we age.”

Previously, Routhier served as director of Nursing at Parson’s Hill Nursing & Rehabilitation in Worcester, and as RN supervisor for Fallon Clinic, also in Worcester. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Nursing from Chamberlain College of Nursing and an associate degree in Nursing from Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester. She is also a certified CPR instructor.

WALTHAM — The Massachusetts Medical Society, the statewide professional association of physicians representing more than 24,000 physicians and medical students in the Commonwealth, has chosen its 2014-15 officers, with seven physicians elected and re-elected to the organization’s leadership at its annual meeting on May 15. Each will serve a one-year term in their respective positions.

Dr. Richard Pieters was elected president. Board-certified in radiation oncology and hospice and palliative care medicine, and a fellow of the American College of Radiology, Pieters is a radiation oncologist at UMass Medical Center in Worcester and a clinical associate professor at UMass Medical School. He served as MMS president-elect and vice president, respectively, for the last two years.

Dr. Dennis Dimitri is the new president-elect. He is a clinical associate professor and vice chair of the Department of Family Medicine & Community Health at UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Medical School. Board-certified in family medicine, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and a past president of the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. James Gessner was elected vice president. Board-certified in anesthesiology and pediatrics, Gessner is a physician with Anaesthesia Associates of Massachusetts, one of New England’s largest private-practice anesthesiology groups serving major academic and medical centers throughout the Northeast. He is also chairman of the Department of Anesthesia at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

Dr. Alain Chaoui, a board-certified family-medicine physician at Family Medicine North in Peabody, was elected secretary-treasurer, and Dr. Corey Collins, director of Pediatric Anesthesia and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, was elected assistant secretary-treasurer.

Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, associate professor of Anesthesiology, Surgery, and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and director of Research for the Boston-based Institute for Safety in Office-Based Surgery, was re-elected speaker of the house of delegates, and Dr. David Rosman, medical director of Mass General Imaging in Worcester and an assistant radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was re-elected vice speaker of the house of delegates.

Noble’s Shaver

WESTFIELD — John Shaver, Noble Hospital’s chief financial officer and an employee at the hospital for 26 years, has been awarded the Founders Medal of Honor by the Healthcare Financial Management Assoc. (HFMA).

Shaver was nominated by the board of directors of the Massachusetts/Rhode Island chapter of the HFMA. He has been an active association member for the past 35 years in New York and Massachusetts, along the way becoming an HFMA fellow. He has been active in helping others in the chapter succeed by chairing the fellowship coaching course committee, proctoring exams, writing test questions, and offering Noble Hospital as a Northeast testing site.

“It will be an honor, and humbling, to have my name listed on the same page with past Medal of Honor recipients, many of whom have been my mentors and heroes since I moved to Massachusetts 26 years ago,” Shaver said. “Volunteering has always been a big part of what I do, both professionally and within the community.  Everyone is busy, but it is important to give back whenever possible.”

WESTFIELD — Noble Hospital is proud to announce that RN Rita Sanders has been nominated for the 2014 Nurses’ Choice Awards, a program of Tangent Medical, an innovator in IV-therapy products and creator of the NovaCath Integrated IV Catheter System.

The Nurses’ Choice Awards were created to honor nurses through National Nurses Week and to recognize those clinicians who demonstrate excellence in improving patient comfort, satisfaction, safety, and the overall quality of patient care. Every nurse considered for this award was nominated by a nursing professional in hospitals and practices across the U.S. and Canada.

“This annual award program raises awareness and gives recognition to many unsung heroes of hospitals and healthcare facilities who dedicate themselves to patient care and healing on a daily basis,” said Curtis Bloch, Tangent Medical’s vice president of Sales & Marketing.

“In the area of IV therapy, a lot is asked of nurses in terms of ensuring patient safety, comfort, satisfaction, and setting patients up for a positive outcome,” he added. “What makes this award special is that all nurses must be nominated by their peers. Nominated nurses specialized in a variety of areas, including infusion therapy, surgery, oncology, pediatrics, orthopedics, and critical care, to name a few. We are excited to open new opportunities to recognize and engage clinicians, especially when it comes to IV therapy and ways to improve patient outcomes.”