Kathleen Ferket
Recognized expert in care transitions, strategic leadership development, alignment across healthcare systems
As a health care clinician and executive, Kathleen divides her time between leadership coaching and healthcare consulting. Passionate about quality and improving transitions of care, she has broad expertise in population health, care coordination, strategies to enhance value-based care and healthcare simulation.
Kathleen is a founding member of L3 Advisors and continues to serve as the Principal of Ferket Advisory Services, LLC.
As a consultant for CGi. LLC, she collaborated on the development and implementation of the American Case Management Association’s Transition of Care Standards. She co-led a six-month Learning Collaborative, which included 5 prominent organizations (Duke, Innova, Trinity, Tenet, and Memorial Hermann) to test the application and utilization of the Transition of Care Standards. This resulted in a coauthored White Paper and national presentations in 2020 and 2021. Kathleen co-developed and oversees an ACMA program (ACTS) which introduced the use of simulation geared specifically to the transition of care professionals.
As an AMITA Health system vice president role, she aligned care management practices across a 9-hospital system. In 2017, the Amita ACO was ranked # 3 in the nation and reduced post-acute costs by nearly 10%. Prior leadership roles included hospital operations, service line leadership, and strategic partnership development.
Kathleen is a registered nurse, certified nurse practitioner and registered leadership coach. She has published in peer reviewed journals and contributed content to patient safety, population health, and healthcare resiliency books. Kathleen graduated from DePaul University with a BSN, a MSN from Rush University, and obtained a Women on Boards certificate from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Kathleen embraces the opportunity to give back. She currently serves on the Endeavor Health regional board (formerly Northshore Health), the Angel Harvey Family Health Center Advisory Committee and supports advocacy/research for the MS Society.
View Kathleen Ferket’s board bio page.
Debra McElroy
Transformative leader with a focus on care healthcare workforce, care management, nursing and public health
Debra McElroy is an accomplished healthcare executive with demonstrated success in leading people, teams and healthcare coalitions on the local, state and national level. Her strategic planning, operations, and business development skills consistently assure growth and delivery of high value services. A seasoned national speaker and writer, she previously hosted the Vizient Nursing Leadership Series, a national TV education series, as well as a healthcare podcast sponsored by the American Case Management Association. She has published on numerous healthcare topics.
Debra is now a founding member and principal at L3 Advisors Group and continues as a principal of Debra A McElroy LLC.
Debra is the former Senior Vice President for the American Case Management Association (CGi LLC), the largest resource for case management and transitions of care professionals, with 31 state chapters. In addition to association operations, Debra led a collaborative of national healthcare experts to drive the development of the ACMA’s national Transition of Care Standards, creating a common framework for all healthcare settings to assure safe, effective and efficient care delivery as patients navigate our healthcare systems. She established the Association of Physician Leadership in Care Management (APLCM) for physician leaders in care management, and launched the first case management simulation program, now adopted in over 100 hospitals across the country.
Previously Debra served as the executive national leader for all nursing programs and products for Vizient, the nation’s largest healthcare performance improvement company with 5,000 not-for-profit health system members and their affiliates. Debra’s role included leading a chief nursing officer network representing 95% of the academic medical centers and oversight of the nursing data products. Debra has a passion for workforce and onboarding issues. The Vizient (previously University HealthSystem Consortium) Nurse Residency ProgramTM experienced 300%+ growth during her tenure, currently serves more than 600 hospitals and has been endorsed by the Institute of Medicine and the Joint Commission. She was the architect of the Vizient Nurse Residency ProgramTM as a state model, launching in Hawaii, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Debra also co-founded CAP2TM (the Center for Advancing Provider Practices) which developed the largest dataset of its kind, providing assessment of more than 33,000 practitioners. CAP2TM was awarded the local ACHE Innovation Award and was listed as best practice by Joint Commission.
Debra’s background also includes work in the public health sector. She led a HRSA funded innovative health collaborative in a large collar county of Chicago that was comprised of hospitals, federally qualified clinics (FQHC), the county health department, and community partners to structure healthcare access to the 36% the county residents then identified as uninsured, underinsured, or publicly insured. Their work resulted in a 45% increase in access to provider care and Debra was able to draft and support legislation that provided pharmaceutical, specialty care and data for the county’s residents. Deb’s public health experience also encompassed leading a consortium impacting the 3 million Chicago collar county residents addressing escalating asthma morbidity and death rates.
Debra holds a bachelors in nursing and a masters degree in public health. She holds certificates in coaching, healthcare finance and University of Washington’s Women’s Board Director certification. Debra held a three year position on the Thought Leadership advisory board for the National Quality Forum in Washington DC.
View Debra McElroy’s board bio page.
Mary Ann O’Reilly BSN, JD, LLM
Recognized Nurse Attorney, Patient Safety and Health Care Provider Advocate
Mary Ann is a hybrid. Prior to co-founding L3Advisors Group, she practiced as both a clinical nurse and attorney before pivoting into patient safety and risk management. Leveraging her clinical expertise and keen insight into the life cycle of a medical error, Mary Ann revolutionized the way healthcare systems report, respond to and remediate patient safety events. As chief clinical risk officer at Ascension Amita Health and then SCL Health systems she pioneered the first programs in transparency reporting. and lead system boards to adopt a culture of safety requiring both accountability and support for providers. Self-reporting of near misses, evidence of a system-wide highly evolved culture of safety, rose by 180% under her leadership. These strategies resulted in a major reduction in the number of serious patient safety events and law suits filed and an increase in early resolution of non-filed claims.
In partnership with system Chief Medical and Chief Nursing Officers, Mary Ann directed numerous multi-disciplinary teams across the system to create new, sustainable solutions that resulted in a reduction of recurring serious safety events by 68%. Both systems realized significant year over year savings on claims managed and paid out as a result of this sustained work. Employee engagement scores soared in the units where these programs were initiated.
As a practicing attorney, Mary Ann defended physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and entire health care systems in professional negligence claims in Chicago and New York. Her negotiation skills and focused approach to each case allowed her to learn about how the healthcare systems and processes were failing and setting providers up for error. Mary Ann used this knowledge to conduct deep dives into each serious safety event, a practice she later led risk and safety teams to perfect. This resulted in the creation of highly reliable teams and a sustainable program that gave healthcare providers the support they need to heal, stay engaged . overcome and even prevent tragedy, a legacy that drives Mary Ann’s passion to continue to mentor and coach today. Today, Mary Ann’s unique legal perspective also provides invaluable guidance to boards dealing with compliance, conflicts, risk management, HR issues and other governance concerns.
Throughout Mary Ann’s career she has developed a variety of programs for new practitioners and seasoned leaders, focused on resiliency, apology and disclosure She developed original curriculum and provided training for the initial real time support for patients, families, providers and front-line staff involved in a harmful safety event. (Care 4 Us) She was recognized as a Distinguished Leader for her work in patient safety and provider support by Ascension Amita Health. She was the first leader to insist on sharing powerful patient safety stories with the board as a means of ensuring a better quality of care. As a member of the Quality Council of the Board, she created novel monitoring programs to address culture of safety, power imbalance and civility. She was particularly interested and involved with young physicians (students, residents, fellows). Mary Ann borrowed from her expertise gained as a member of the University of Illinois Patient Safety Team which pioneered transparency. Her ability to effectively communicate across various disciplines and hierarchies (from front line to board members) makes her uniquely qualified to provide individual or team coaching for those seeking to gain early or mid-career personal and leadership insight.
Mary Ann obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Illinois College of Nursing, and her Juris Doctorate and Masters in Health Care Law from DePaul University College of Law. She has lectured nationally on the need for Second Victim programs, transparency in self-reporting and disclosure to families. She is Green Belt Lean certified and a graduate of the UCLA Women in Governance and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Executive in Patient Safety Development programs. She holds a certificate in personal coaching. She has continuously coached individuals and teams throughout her career. Mary Ann is an active volunteer and advisor to Camp One Step which provides a true camp experience for pediatric oncology patients and their families. She is also a board member of The Boulevard, the only medical respite residence for Chicago’s homeless where she also co-chairs the Human Resources committee. Mary Ann is a member of the Advisory Board of Stedi, a start-up physical therapy mobility innovator. She is an avid reader, hiker, cyclist and artist.