DCH CEO Katrina Keefer Pledges New Era Of 'Transparency, Accountability'

TUSCALOOSA, AL — New DCH Health System Chief Executive Officer Katrina Keefer has barely been on the job a week, but told the Tuscaloosa City Council on Tuesday that she has already set out to reshaping the culture of the Tuscaloosa-based health care provider.

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As Patch previously reported, DCH Health System in April announced Keefer as the successor to longtime CEO Bryan Kindred, who retired in July after nearly four decades with DCH.

Keefer was hired by the area's second-largest employer after serving as CEO of Augusta University Health in Georgia and executive vice president of health affairs at Augusta University. The Monroeville native brings with her 20 years of health care leadership experience in Alabama and Georgia.

She told the Council during its regular meeting on Tuesday that she has already had conversations with Tuscaloosa County officials and others from the City of Northport, as she hopes to improve the lines of communication shared by the health system and the communities it serves.

"I’ll be focusing internally to establish an executive team that is really ready to lead the cultural changes that are going to be necessary to stabilize our workforce, which is going to include patient care," she said.

Indeed, the quality of patient care has been an ongoing talking point in the community — a notion that has not been aided by DCH's consistently-low patient safety grades published by The Leapfrog Group.

Most recently, the hospital system received a "D" safety grade for spring 2022.

Transparency and communication have also been concerns, most recently with tempers flaring regarding DCH Board Member David Albright — a University of Alabama professor who was appointed in September 2021 by the Northport City Council as its sole representative on the hospital system's Board of Trustees.

As Patch previously reported, Albright went public with his frustrations after initially being barred from accessing certain hospital information and seeing his onboarding process halted due to his refusal to sign a nondisclosure agreement relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The matter was eventually smoothed over, but left a bad taste in the mouths of many amid swirling changes for DCH Health System, including the abrupt resignation of DCH Health System Chief Operating Officer and Administrator Paul Betz, which was announced in May.

To Keefer's credit, however, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox pointed out that she represents the first DCH CEO to visit the Council in the last 20 years. Council President Kip Tyner concurred, going on to mention that Keefer previously met with half of the council prior to her first day on the job.

"We had a wonderful conversation together," Tyner said. "I think each one of us left knowing you were the right person for the job. DCH is extremely important, like you said, not just to this city, but the entire West Alabama area."

During her visit with the Council on Tuesday, Keefer also spoke to the resources throughout the region, in addition to the need to make sure DCH is providing physicians with a great place to practice and a great environment they can invite others to or recruit into their practices.

She also stressed the importance of promoting success stories relating to patient care, in order to positively influence the narrative around DCH Health System.

"Whether [physicians] would like to remain independent or whether they would like to look at employed models, we want to keep people here at home," she said. "We also realize your constituents have a choice, so we'll be working to communicate ... our great patient stories.

"I just want to build a relationships," Keefer added. "I want to begin to rebuild and establish the trust with our external constituents. Understand that I understand that what happens within our facilities needs to improve. But I also beg of your your support ... I pledge to you transparency, accountability and I really look forward to working with you. "

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