Ingram's: 2024 Heroes in Healthcare

Ingram’s introduced Heroes in Healthcare 21 years ago as part of its commitment to covering health care in the Kansas City region, honoring the real people delivering that care. Heroes in Healthcare takes an enterprise-wide view of what’s driving high-quality care. 

Saint Luke's is honored to have two employees recognized in this years line up of Heroes in Healthcare. 

Cynthia Phillips, CNA, Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City

For the clinical team in a hospital pre-operative unit, the sights, sounds, and processes are matters of routine. To patients steeling themselves for surgery or a hospital stay, none of it is routine—and in many cases, it may be overwhelming, if not merely frightening. In more than 20 years with Saint Luke’s as a certified nursing assistant, Cynthia Phillips has never lost sight of that patient perspective. “I enjoy pre-op because of the unique opportunity it provides,” she says. “I am the only CNA in the department, which allows me to create close-knit and trustful relationships with nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists. “I encounter every single surgical patient and am honored to develop that connection.” Phillips is a Kansas City native who was inspired to work in a healthcare setting by the example of her mother, a long-time home health nurse. “Through her, I realized how badly the world needs nursing aides—those who help both people and the nurses who care for them,” she says. Faith has never been far removed from the technical details of her pre-op duties, into which she routinely incorporates a prayer. Earlier in her career, when doing hospice care, she recalls, “I would hold the hand of every patient and pray for them before they passed. Those moments stick with you forever. Today, I continue to pray for every patient I touch daily.” As the first person to arrive in that unit and prep every room and chart for the day, she fully grasps the importance of her duties and the setting. “Pre-op is the last line of defense before the patient goes into surgery,” Phillips says. “We all work together to ensure that each patient is not only physically ready for their procedure but emotionally prepared as well.  It is truly rewarding.” Those rewards keep her coming back for more. “First and foremost, I stay here for my patients; I love making those connections beyond what words can express,” she says. 

Marsha Weaver, MD, Vice President & Chief Population Health Officer at Saint Luke’s

For two decades, Marsha Weaver impacted patients’ health one on one as a physician. Now, doing it at population level is what gets her out of bed every day. “Throughout my career in medicine, I have always had a deep interest in how we can move upstream to improve the health of our communities,” says Weaver, a physician who calls her pivot to population health was “a natural progression in my career” when she saw how social factors impact the health of individuals. “Population health allows me to focus with a wide panoramic lens on the health of an entire population of patients and then zoom back in to see how we can provide whole person care at an individual patient level. We know that about 80 percent of what impacts a person’s health occurs outside of the medical exam room.” Born in Wichita and educated at K-State for undergrad and KU for her M.D., she was drawn to the field as a teenager, building on a passion for science and personal experience as a teen when her great-grandfather was hospitalized. “I stayed by his side day and night to help make sure he was comfortable and advocated for his care,” she recalls. “That experience solidified my decision to pursue a career in medicine.” Another formative teen influence was reading “Horse and Buggy Doctor” by Arthur Hertzler, a doctor who practiced in Halstead, Kan. “The narrative of continuity of care and long-term relationships with patients resonated with me,” Weaver says. “My weekly time spent in clinical practice is less with my new role in Population Health, but during my peak clinical practice time, my greatest joy was the relationships I built with patients over a 20-year time span.” Now, she’s on a cutting edge where medicine meets tech. “Data analytics helps us to be able to visualize the quality of care we are performing and take action on these critical issues,” Weaver says. “The ability to integrate this data visualization into our electronic health system is a game-changer.”