Cross-Sector Panel Discussion

Summary

The panelists discuss healthcare leadership and operations through their career experiences. Key themes include building systems across a distributed senior-living network, coordinating multidisciplinary teams, improving care processes, and adapting career plans as opportunities arise.

Business and Operating Practices

• Build processes before scaling: Rick Olen joined a loosely coordinated network of retirement communities and helped establish central-office systems. Over time, the organization grew into a large, multi-state senior-living system.
• Learn operations from the ground up: Olen recommends taking roles that include “other duties as assigned.” His budget-management work exposed him to hospital operations, physicians, retirement communities, accounting, technology, information systems, planning, and project feasibility.
• Use cross-functional teams: Leah Jackson describes daily multidisciplinary rounds for individual patients and weekly reviews of all hospital patients. Teams included physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, dietitians, and case managers, as well as custodial staff when their input could affect discharge planning.
• Make improvement work concrete: Jackson participated in quality-improvement efforts focused on patient satisfaction and helping patients return home sooner. Her team also launched stroke-education, hip-fracture, and other care programs, along with community support groups.
• Design services around the people served: Olen argues that senior-living wellness should reflect residents’ interests and participation rather than rely solely on administratively planned activity calendars. He observed that active engagement can improve community vitality and resident well-being.
• Plan across the full service journey: Rehabilitation discharge planning required assessing patients’ home environments, equipment, transportation, family support, and ability to continue care safely. Rural settings could add barriers such as long distances, gravel driveways, and limited access to durable medical equipment.
• Balance service quality with external constraints: The panelists describe the challenge of matching recovery needs to insurer timelines, such as a 21-day coverage limit, when a patient may need more time. They recommend advocating for what is right for the person while navigating financial and regulatory constraints.
• Create ways to serve people with fewer resources: At Covenant, Olen helped establish a benevolent-care fund, supported in part by some residents’ trust distributions. The fund helped cover care costs for residents who could not afford the full rate, including retired missionaries.
• Collaborate beyond traditional organizational boundaries: Olen cites cross-organization projects that led to workers’ compensation, physical-therapy, and pharmacy ventures. He recommends asking professionals for advice, building relationships, and exploring partnerships rather than assuming an opportunity must fit an existing job description.

Career and Leadership Recommendations

• Hold career plans loosely: explore interests, learn from unexpected roles, and stay open to changing direction.
• Treat education and credentials as entry points, not the sole measures of professional value. Grades and GPA may open doors, while relationships, judgment, collaboration, and service contribute to long-term impact.
• Be intentionally present with patients, students, colleagues, and clients. The panelists emphasize listening, noticing individual needs, and making time for relationship-building.
• Practice flexibility while maintaining goals. Jackson describes this as taking a “rigid stance of flexibility”: working toward a vision while adapting to interruptions and unexpected opportunities.
• In healthcare, consider the whole person and their context. Physical recovery can depend on mental readiness, social support, spiritual concerns, and access to resources. Patient education is useful only when people also have the means and support to apply it.

Metrics and Examples

• Covenant retirement communities: Grew to approximately $500 million in size, operating in 10 states, serving nearly 6,000 residents, with almost 3,000 employees.
• Rehabilitation operations: Patients typically stayed about three weeks. Jackson worked with individual patients for about 90 minutes a day, five to six days a week.
• Workforce and career examples: Olen spent 52 months with the IRS and described his first seven years after college as a varied period of retail, auditing, and other jobs before entering healthcare leadership.
• Care constraints: One example involved a 21-day insurance limit that could conflict with an individual’s recovery timeline.
• Other business metrics: No specific revenue, margin, customer-acquisition, or growth targets were discussed beyond the organization’s scale figures.

Presenters

• Rick Olen — Adjunct faculty member at Bethel University; healthcare executive and consultant; founder of Lessons to Learn Solutions and Alive and Living.
• Julie Dehan — Nurse and Bethel University faculty member.
• Leah Jackson — Physical therapist and Bethel University applied health sciences faculty member.