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FINALIST: Non-Physician
Michele O’Connor, MSN, ANP-BC, CCM
Nurse Practitioner, IU Health Physicians at IU Health Methodist/ Hospitalist-Transition Clinic
Michele O’Connor’s nursing career has taken many turns, from working with cardiac patients to working the phones as a case manager at a giant health insurance company. But her favorite role is helping people who struggle to meet their health needs outside of a hospital setting.
“I like working with people who need help,” O’Connor said, explaining the appeal of her job leading the Indiana University Health-Methodist Transition Clinic, which puts her in direct contact with some of the most challenging cases in the system.
(IBJ photo/Eric Learned)A nurse practitioner, O’Connor has been the clinic’s lead health care provider since it opened in 2011. The clinic was started to reduce readmissions by supporting the unmet health care needs of patients as they transition from one care setting to another. Patients are typically referred to the clinic by hospital case managers or physicians.
O’Connor has seen patients in the clinic from age 19 to over 90, but most are between the ages of 30 and 50. Many don’t have insurance, or do have insurance but don’t have a primary care doctor. Often, they are referred because there is a suspicion they don’t understand their diagnosis or the need for proper follow-up care. Many of her patients are alcoholics or drug addicted.
Her approach is straightforward. “I try to be honest with them and treat them like I’d like to be treated. I don’t look down on them.”
O’Connor, 53, tries to convey what she feels: that she cares and is concerned about their well-being.
“This is a calling for me,” she said. “It’s not a job.”
How does she remain positive in the face of so much dysfunction? “I pray a lot, and I pray for my patients.”
She sees clients in the clinic one morning a week, one afternoon and all day on Wednesdays. She has learned not to get too caught up with appointment times.
“I see them when they get here,” she said, explaining that many are walking to the clinic or taking a bus or cab.
Her time is split equally between the Transition Clinic and Methodist’s Preadmission Testing Clinic, where the staff’s job is to identify and head off problems that could complicate surgeries and lead to readmissions.
That’s an area IU Health-Methodist has seen improvement in since the Transition Clinic opened, thanks to the efforts of O’Connor, a medical assistant and her team of pharmacists. Since 2011, the readmission rate for patients deemed to be at high risk for readmission has fallen from 17.7 percent to approximately 9 percent.
By the time O’Connor was chosen to lead the Transition Clinic, she had seen the plight of patients from several angles. She was a cardiac-care nurse at St. Vincent Hospital, a case manager for what is now Anthem, and wrote Medicaid policy for a state contractor. A job at the Methodist Emergency Room, where she identified and counseled patients who were repeat visitors, were uninsured or had no primary care physician, was perhaps the best preparation for what she’s doing now, which is convincing her patients to take ownership of their care.
“Somehow, through her direct interactions with them, she often inspires them to want to become better, healthier versions of themselves,” said her nominator, Julia Koehler, a dean at the Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences who has observed O’Connor’s work at the Transition Clinic.•
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