Building a health system
Genesis CEO retires after nearly 40 years in health care
DAVENPORT, Iowa -- The day was June 1, 1994, the official creation of Genesis Health System.
Leo Bressanelli, its first President and Chief Executive Officer, stood amid a crowd of community leaders, health care staff and news media to help celebrate the day of new beginnings. A new era of health care in the Quad Cities had been born.
“This is indeed a new beginning, a new tomorrow,’” Bressanelli told the crowd. “This occasion brings together the combined histories of 225 years of health care service to our community.”
The consolidation of St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals brought far more than new signs and new phone numbers. It brought the official uniting of two Davenport hospitals that had delivered the babies; tended the sick; and, helped the dying loved ones of generations of families. Each brought their own religious roots, histories and human strides to the union.
Perhaps no one was more mindful of this than the health system’s new leader, who would need to blend the traditions while leading staff, physicians and volunteers down an uncharted path to becoming a regional health care system.
“It was a fascinating period of time, yet a very challenging and busy time, too,” Bressanelli recalls. “We weren’t St. Luke’s; we weren’t Mercy. We were new, and we had to create our own identity out of the identities of our predecessors.
“We had to appreciate the past, but look forward. We couldn’t focus on the rearview mirror.”
---
Bressanelli retires today after 14 years as the health system’s first and only President and CEO and 38 years in Quad Cities health care. When he drives away, the far-reaching health system that grew almost three times its size under his leadership will be much too big to see in his car’s rearview mirror.
Today, Genesis Health System is a nationally recognized Top 100 integrated health system spanning a nine-county, bi-state region. With a 138-year legacy of caring, it remains the Quad Cities’ only locally owned and operated regional health care system. That’s a great source of pride to him.
Under his leadership, Genesis has grown to four hospital campuses with the 1996 affiliation with Illini Hospital in Silvis and the 1997 affiliation with DeWitt Community Hospital. It has created the area’s largest physician’s group, Genesis Health Group, uniting the primary, psychological and urgent care services of more than 100 practitioners in more than 30 locations.
It has built the Genesis Heart Institute, the Clarissa C. Cook Hospice House and new joint ventures for outpatient surgery. It has created the most comprehensive array of workplace services in the region and a Genesis VNA & Hospice that is one of the nation’s Top 100 home health agencies.
Meanwhile, Bressanelli, 63, has helped cultivate many relationships to advance health care in the region.
To name just a few, these relationships helped build the Bettendorf Family YMCA and the Edgerton Women’s Health Center. They created partnerships with many Genesis-employed and independent physician groups. They brought digital mammography to the Quad Cities and the region’s most advanced neonatal intensive care unit to Genesis.
Today, Bressanelli calls Genesis a massive “melting pot” of sorts. As the grandson of Italian immigrants; husband to wife, Meg; father to six children; and grandfather to 15 grandchildren, he knows the subject well. “Just like a large, extended family, you bring in different members to Genesis and all of a sudden you expand your richness and traditions,” he says.
Creating a bi-state health system
Creating a bi-state health system was no small feat, requiring the union of multiple boards over many geographic areas. Success involved communication – and ultimately, the trust that people had in the Genesis CEO.
“That trust in Leo was always a selling point in building a regional health care system,” says Edwin V. Motto, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Genesis Health System.
“For me, the overwhelming theme that marks his leadership is stewardship. It’s a concept in medicine that is not very common now, but to Leo this health system was never his. He was given the opportunity to uphold the mission; to lead the vision; to invest in the community’s health care. But it wasn’t like this was his. He was only going to have it for a while, and his job was to make it better.”
Indeed, he did. Today, the success of Genesis is reflected in its many awards: Consumer Choice; 100 Most Wired Health System; top rankings for its heart program; a center of excellence bariatric surgery program; and, the highest honor in nursing – Magnet designation – for its two Davenport campuses.
This month, Bressanelli saw two more major honors. Genesis earned designation as a Top 100 Integrated Health Network award and an Iowa Recognition Performance Excellence Program Bronze Level award, an honor presented last week by Iowa Gov. Chet Culver.
“Over the years, Leo has accomplished so much,” Dr. Motto adds. “He was the right person at the right time for Genesis.”
Many unions, many traditions Bressanelli will always be remembered as a pioneer, the first to lead the newly consolidated St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals and then onto expansions that crossed the Mississippi River. He champions the fact, however, that the traditions and histories of all the consolidated organizations that make up Genesis are equally important to its success.
Mercy, founded by the Sisters of Mercy, opened in 1869. The Episcopalian-affiliated St. Luke’s was founded in 1895.
DeWitt Community Hospital was founded in 1952 by its community citizens, led by supporters like Ray and Lucile Brown, to serve the health care needs of the DeWitt area. Illini Hospital opened in 1968 with the help of leaders like Dr. Harold and Evelyn Perlmutter who wanted to ensure the care for residents of upper Rock Island County, he says. Both hospitals had become integral to their communities before they ever became part of Genesis.
The same holds true for the multiple home health organizations that created Genesis VNA and Hospice. Its century-long contribution to the area dated back to the 1902 creation of VNA of Davenport and ultimately combined the 95-year history of the Clinton and Illini organizations, a tradition of hospice care and home medical equipment services to create Genesis at Home.
Likewise, many longstanding physicians’ groups from across the region have united over the years to create Genesis Health Group. Their legacy of caring brings a more coordinated system of care to Quad City residents, he says, and ensures that the physician who knows them best is at the forefront of their care.
The early days
A century after the creation of St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals, rapidly escalating health care costs made it apparent that the hospitals should unite rather than compete to better serve the community. The hospitals announced plans to consolidate in March 1993.
At the time, the 49-year-old Bressanelli was working as executive vice president of St. Luke’s and had been named its future president, with the retirement of James Stuhler. By late spring, he would be designated President and CEO of the new health care system.
Bressanelli recalls the excitement and challenge of the consolidation process. The journey may not have always been smooth, but the destination was always clear.
“There was a lot of work being done before the consolidation became official that really created the success of the organization,” Bressanelli says. “It was phenomenally well-planned. The new Board of Directors was united and believed in what we were doing. I also admired the staff greatly because they had to do a lot of things that were very difficult. Everyone was very courageous. We created a culture that embraced change and to this day that culture continues.”
With the birth of Genesis came a promise to the Quad Cities community: to save $68 million to $74 million in five years. After just one year, Bressanelli would announce that Genesis already had realized $33.6 million in savings. The total savings would far surpass the goal established.
“We were under a lot of scrutiny and evaluation, not just by our community but by federal agencies, and that was OK,” he says. “We had a real sense of obligation to the community to do what we set out to do. That was our focus and our priority.”
The mission of Genesis — “to provide compassionate, quality health services to all those in need” became the compass behind every decision he and the Board of Directors made. Even today, the mission is mentioned in every single speech he gives. For comforting emphasis, he always adds: “no matter who you are, no matter what you have or what you don’t have.”
“Each and every one of us is vulnerable when we are sick,” says Bressanelli, who was raised in Sterling, Ill., where his family owned and managed a nursing home. “Even those with material wealth may still be without their health or family support.”
He takes pride that Genesis has stayed true to its mission, advanced the vision of the organization and improved community health care.
“The consolidations of all the various organizations worked, and worked very well,” he says. “Across the nation, there were a number of consolidations that occurred during that time that were not sustained or were consolidations on paper only. Genesis became a model for success.”
A model for success
Sr. Betty Smith, RSM, who had been President of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas at the time of the consolidation and later served a decade on the board of Genesis Health System, gives Bressanelli a lot of credit.
Integrity and honesty dominated his administration, she says, and thus, she has never regretted Mercy’s decision to consolidate. Fourteen years later, she is pleased to see that the traditions of Mercy “have continued to be present in the new reality of Genesis.”
“Genesis worked, I think, because we had a dedicated board, and we had a CEO who could deal with issues of consolidation,” she says. “Try and think of what it’s like to blend two cultures, to learn to get along with a new in-law. What you work through is a microcosm of what Leo intended to do. The challenge was tremendous,” she says.
Debby Stafford, a former St. Luke’s and Genesis Health System board member, and Genesis Health Group family physician Michael J. Gimbel II, M.D., say the success of Genesis also came from his focus on compassion. Each has known him for more than 30 years.
“For Leo, it was always the little things. He would visit patients at the hospital or send a special meal up to a friend or a relative,” Dr. Gimbel says. “He would look in on people to see how their care was being administered, rather than just listening to the stats at the end of each month. He was not at all the dollars and cents guy I thought an administrator would be.”
Stafford, who also served on the consolidation team, says she saw a very different side of Bressanelli during the building of the Clarissa C. Cook Hospice House in Bettendorf.
“He had very strong feelings about what that house was going to look like and how it was going to feel,” she says. “He wanted it to have all the amenities of a five-star hotel, and yet all the comforts of home.”
As a result, many traits of the hospice house — a beautiful chapel, a children’s play room, cozy fireplaces and family rooms — make it a place for patients and families to celebrate life at the end of life. “We were building a place where people were going to die, and we were used to building places where people go to get well,” Stafford says. “This was a very different mindset, and Leo really rallied. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it, and it was wonderful.”
Serving 5,000 employees
During his leadership, he also felt it his honor to serve the 5,000 employees of Genesis. As testament, the Genesis Employee Emergency Assistance Fund has been formally named in honor of Bressanelli, who championed its creation and was its lead giver. The fund has provided nearly $700,000 in grants to employees who find themselves in financial crisis through no fault of their own.
To underscore his support, he asked guests at his retirement dinner to make contributions to the fund in lieu of personal gifts. They responded by donating $26,000. At that time, he gave special recognition to the staff. “Through their God-given talents and their labor, the mission of Genesis comes alive,” he said. “It is they who bear the burden and the joy of serving.”
He thanked his family, and gave special words of appreciation for his wife, Meg, and the support and sacrifice she has given over the years. “She has been my compass, always letting me know the direction of ‘true North,’ “ he says.
He also thanked the Board of Directors of Genesis boards, both past and present; his loyal and talented Executive Team; and, the contributions of generations of community citizens who have played a role in the 138-year legacy of Genesis. “The Genesis organization and its legacy is a treasure for this community,” he concluded. “I say to you, ‘Cherish this treasure.’ ”
Never focusing on the rearview window, he has a feeling of exhilaration about his retirement and, once again, charting new paths. “I just want to experience new things. I don’t have any absolute plans, and that’s part of the excitement.”
---
PROFILE Leo Bressanelli
Age: 63
Education: Bachelor of Science degree from St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Ind.; master’s degree in business administration from Xavier University, Cincinnati.
Health career: Began his Quad Cities career in health care in January 1970 at St. Luke’s Hospital in Davenport. Appointed president there in 1993 and has been President and CEO of Genesis Health System since its creation in 1994.
Affiliations: Recently ended his term as Chairman of the Iowa Hospital Association; board member of Wellmark Health Plan of Iowa, Inc., Wells Fargo Bank Iowa, past chairperson of DavenportOne, Kahl Home for the Aged, Scott County Y, United Way of the Quad Cities Area, Quad-City Development Group, Renew Moline and past chairperson of Health Enterprises of Iowa.
###