12.14.12

Durbin Praises Sister Shelia Lyne for Making Chicago a Healthier, Better City

Chicago health care icon is retiring after inspiring career that spanned nearly a half-century

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today praised South Side of Chicago native Sister Sheila Lyne for her passionate devotion to health care and justice which has made Chicago a healthier and better city.  Last week, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center announced that Sister Sheila Lyne would be retiring from her position as President and CEO as soon as a successor can be named. 

 

“If Chicago politics is not where you would expect to find a nun working, well, you have never met Sister Sheila Lyne,” said Durbin.  “Sister Sheila has been an icon in Chicago health care for almost 50 years.  As the first female public health commissioner, Sister Sheila was never afraid to challenge authority.  Her decisions were based on science and the dictates of her own conscience.”

 

“While she will remain with Mercy as senior adviser to Mercy Foundation, the hospital's philanthropic arm, her departure as Mercy’s president and CEO will bring to a close one of the most remarkable careers in Chicago health care in our lifetimes,” Durbin continued.  “Sister Sheila Lyne’s passionate devotion to health care and justice has made Chicago a healthier and better city and we are all in her debt.”

 

Sister Sheila first took over as president of Mercy Hospital in 1976 as it was on the verge of closing.  Her business savvy and innovative management ideas helped put the hospital back on track and kept the hospital open.  In 1991, Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed her as the first woman and the first non-physician city health commissioner.  In 2000, following a series of management blunders, Mercy Hospital was losing $40 million a year and once again facing bankruptcy.  Sister Sheila stepped down as Chicago’s public health commissioner and returned as Mercy’s president and CEO to lead the hospital’s turnaround effort. 

 

Sheila Lyne was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, one of three children of Irish immigrants who met in America.  She attended Little Flower Elementary School and Mercy High School.  She joined the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic religious order, in 1953.  She earned a master's degree in psychiatric nursing from St. Xavier College and an MBA from the University of Chicago and served three years as an assistant professor at the University of Iowa before joining Mercy Hospital in 1970.  

The text of Durbin’s remarks is below:

 

Remarks by Senator Richard Durbin

Thanking Sister Sheila Lyne for Making Chicago a Healthier, Better City

December 13, 2012

 

  • If Chicago politics is not where you would expect to find a nun working, well, you have never met Sister Sheila Lyne.

 

  • Sister Sheila has been an icon in Chicago health care for almost 50 years.  For nearly a decade in the 1990s, she made history as Chicago’s public health commissioner.

 

  • For 15 years before her work as Chicago’s top public health officer and for another dozen years afterwards, this smart, visionary woman also served as president and CEO of Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, a legendary institution that has helped care for poor families on the South Side of Chicago since before the Civil War.

 

  • As public health commissioner, Sister Sheila was never afraid to challenge authority.  Her decisions were based on science and the dictates of her own conscience.

 

  • She was once arrested for ignoring a judge’s order to test every child in a Chicago public school for lead poisoning because she believed the edict was unnecessarily broad and could hurt children and deplete her department’s limited resources. She was out of jail two hours later.

 

  • The first time she took over as president of Mercy Hospital, in 1976, Mercy was bleeding money and on the verge of closing.  Sister Sheila’s business savvy and innovative management ideas helped put the hospital back in the black.

 

  • In 2000, following a series of management blunders, Mercy was losing $40 million a year and once again facing bankruptcy.  Sister Sheila stepped down as Chicago’s public health commissioner and returned as Mercy’s president and CEO to lead the hospital’s turnaround effort.

 

  • Once again, she succeeded with a series of shrewd business decisions and innovative reforms.

 

  • A year ago, Sister Sheila helped engineer the sale of Mercy Hospital to Trinity Health, the tenth-largest health system in the nation and the fourth-largest Catholic health system.

 

  • Last week, at the age of, as she says, “76 ½” -- she insists including the half – Sister Sheila announced that she will step down as president and CEO of Mercy Hospital as soon as her successor can be named.

 

  • While she will remain with Mercy as senior adviser to Mercy Foundation, the hospital's philanthropic arm, her departure as Mercy’s president and CEO will bring to a close one of the most remarkable careers in Chicago health care in our lifetimes.

 

Growing up

 

  • Sheila Lyne was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, one of three children of Irish immigrants who met in America.

 

  • She attended Little Flower Elementary School and Mercy High School.

 

  • She joined the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic religious order, in 1953.

 

  • She earned a master's degree in psychiatric nursing from St. Xavier College and an MBA from the University of Chicago and served three years as an assistant professor at the University of Iowa before joining Mercy Hospital in 1970.  In 1976 she became Mercy’s president and CEO.

 

Chicago health commission

 

  • In 1991, Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed her city health commissioner -- the first woman and the first non-physician ever to hold that job.

 

  • The department’s responsibilities run the gamut from inspecting restaurants, to monitoring and controlling epidemics, and protecting the public against the spread of infectious diseases.  Its clinics receive a million patient visits a year and are the “family doctor” to more Chicagoans than any other single entity.

 

  • HIV and AIDS were taking a devastating and rising toll on the city and the nation, and gay and lesbian groups protested Sister Sheila’s appointment strongly, fearing she would allow Church policies to dictate public health decisions. 

 

  • Sister Sheila surprised her critics by taking on the cause of fighting AIDS, increasing care and prevention funding from $4 million to $40 million and taking other controversial measures.

 

  • She gained national acclaim for her innovative programs to improve the health of poor women and children.

 

  • When she learned that the department had no way to know which areas of the city faced particular problems, she set up an epidemiology department.  Data from that department helped her department to focus and improve its efforts.

 

  • She visited elementary schools, pregnancy crisis centers, welfare clinics, homeless shelters and senior centers throughout the city, listening to people’s stories in order to better understand their lives – and always looking for better ways to combat the city’s health challenges.

 

  • When she started, the infant mortality rate in some poor Chicago neighborhoods was higher than in many developing nations.

 

  • Sister Sheila recruited two women in the Robert Taylor Homes, asked them to find pregnant residents and escort them to one of the department's eight free-standing clinics for prenatal care.  During her tenure, she reduced the city's infant mortality rate by 39 percent.

 

  • She sent a van to circulate through Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods, providing immunizations for children and dramatically increased the percentage of kids who were up to date on their shots.

 

  • She created a citywide plan – hailed by the CDC as a national model -- to combat what she calls the “insidious public health epidemic” of domestic violence.”

 

  • She created special programs to reach minority and immigrant families and established an Office of Lesbian and Gay Health, only the second such office in the nation.

 

  • Her many honors include the Excellence in Public Service Award from a blue-ribbon panel of Chicago's business and industry leaders.

 

“A train that’s difficult to stop”

 

  • Dr. Joanne Smith is president and CEO of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, recently praised Sister Sheila as “one of those leaders who … when she gets behind something, is a train that's difficult to stop.”

 

  • Three years ago she helped prod the Illinois General Assembly to pass a groundbreaking new law capping how much hospitals can charge uninsured patients so that, instead of being the only people who are billed the full sticker price, their bills are closer to what other patients pay.

 

  • She comes to the office seven days a week – usually by 7 a.m. – half-walks and half-jogs about three miles a day.   Some days she trades the walk for the elliptical or Stairmaster.

 

Who doesn’t deserve health care?

 

  • She speaks of Mercy Hospital as a “mission” and believes that health care should be a public good.

 

  • She is, in her words, “so grateful and so privileged that I have been able to be part of making things better.”  But she is still troubled and frustrated by the unmet need.

 

  • When asked what changes she has seen in health care in the last half-century, she replied:  “Not enough.”

 

  • “Who doesn’t deserve health care?” she asked pointedly.

 

Conclusion

 

  • In closing, I would like to close by reading a short excerpt from a Chicago Sun-Times editorial.”

 

  • Quote:  “Some people fight for the poor and the dispossessed by marching on the castle, torches high.  Others, fighting the same fight, cross the drawbridge and work from the inside, maneuvering the levers of power, mastering the arts of management and politics.

 

  • “Sister Sheila Lyne … is the second kind of activist, remarkably so, having done much to make Chicago a more caring city for half a century.”

 

  • The editorial goes on, quote:  “Sister Sheila … says it's time she called it quits, but we suspect we'll see her again. She is of a generation of Catholic sisters, and of a particularly steely order - the Sisters of Mercy - who tend to work until they can't work anymore.”

 

  • “ ‘They are smart, educated women who run things.’ ”

 

  • “They are tough and ramrod straight.  And we would rather they never retire. Certainly not this one.”

 

  • Loretta and I and countless Chicagoans over three generations feel exactly that same way.  Sister Sheila Lyne’s passionate devotion to health care and justice has made Chicago a healthier and better city and we are all in her debt.