Faces of Madison
Pharmacy Director Dorsie Sullenger Reflects on 42 Years at Hospital
Story and Photo by Jeremiah Kalb
The late co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, once said that it’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people.
Pharmacy Director Dorsie Sullenger, one of Madison’s longest continuously-serving employees, credits his team for the technology innovations he’s helped bring to the hospital’s pharmacy over the years.
“I’ve had a brilliant staff,” Sullenger says. “I’d put them up against anybody in the state. They’ve all embraced technology.”
During his time, Sullenger has seen the typewriter give way to computers. Computers and phones shrank down to devices his team carries in their pockets, and the internet means work is always with them, for better or worse.
Raised near or below the poverty line in Rigby, Idaho, there was only one car in Sullenger’s household, so he walked everywhere as a teen.
“I paid for most of my school clothes,” he says. His first job at Western Auto earned him forty-five cents an hour.
Sullenger was the first member of his immediate family to graduate from college.
“When I was a kid growing up, that’s all I got hammered into me was you will go to college, and you will get a professional degree,” he says.
Sullenger switched his major from accounting to pharmacology after three years of dealing with a professor who made him and his classmates look like fools in front of the class.
“I had always liked chemistry, and I was really good at math,” Sullenger says. As a kid, he carried a picture in his mind of Ken Regan filling prescriptions at Idaho Drug.
“That always intrigued me,” Sullenger says.
He applied and was accepted into the Idaho State University pharmacy program almost immediately.
Today, Sullenger drives a Tesla, a good example of how much he loves hard work and technology, especially plug-in electric cars.
After spending just a few minutes with the man, it is apparent that Sullenger stands in awe of the advancements of humanity and a person’s potential to make a difference in the world.
Sullenger first set foot on the Madison campus in September of 1979 as a staff pharmacist working 20 hours a week that first year.
A year later, Sullenger was hired on full-time, then became the director of the pharmacy in 1982.
“I have seen a lot of changes in the last 42 years at Madison,” he says. “We went from using an electric typewriter to print prescription & IV labels to a sophisticated software system that auto prints almost all of these labels.”
Because of the hospital’s growth, his team has expanded from five employees to eleven over the years, including the addition of a board-certified oncology pharmacist.
Perhaps one of Sullenger’s most significant achievements has been keeping Madison’s Pharmacy at the forefront of emerging technology for over 40 years.
Despite Madison beginning as a small, rural hospital, Sullenger’s demonstration of his tech prowess and business acumen has been very valuable to a growing county-owned single-entity organization.
His long resume includes the 340B Drug Pricing program that saves the hospital over five million dollars a year, computerized pharmacy software, Omnicell’s automated medication dispensing system, smart pump technology, and recently IVX, an integrated solution that safely and consistently guides technicians step-by-step through the IV compounding process.
What has all of Sullenger’s hard work translated to?
“The hospital pharmacists’ role has switched from a dispensing mode to a clinical mode,” he says.
And this helps keep the hospital’s patients safe and back on the road to recovery and wellness.
Giving Dogs a Second Chance at Life with MRI Tech Anna Struhs
Story by Jeremiah Kalb
On a chilly evening in March, Anna Struhs loaded a bag of slip leashes and dog collars into her Honda Pilot in preparation for a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Utah.
The following day, two furry animals named Misty and Queenie waited at the I-15 Exit 344 in Ogden for the next three legs of their “freedom ride,” and Struhs was their driver.
In the “rescue world” where Struhs has played a part since 2019, a “freedom ride” is a magical carpet ride out of an animal shelter and eventually into the loving arms of a new owner.
“They are there because some human failed them miserably, by surrendering or abandoning or dumping them,” Struhs says.
Approximately 3.1 million dogs enter U.S. animal shelters nationwide every year. About 390,000 of those dogs are euthanized each year.
For this transport, Struhs received a text asking her if there was any way she could also transport some rabbits out of Brigham City.
“I can do that,” she replied.
Any day Struhs has off from operating the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner is a day she is transporting animals within Idaho or across neighboring state lines.
Over the years, Struhs has transported cats, rabbits, potbelly pigs, guinea pigs, and one rat, but mostly dogs.
“It means giving them a chance at a life of love, something they didn’t have before,” she says.
Pet transport is the transfer of adoptable pets from over-populated areas to regions of the U.S. where demand for adoptable pets is high.
In the case of Misty, she came in from Cedar City, Utah, as a terrified dog.
“I don’t know what happened in her life, but she loved me and loved being around people,” Struhs says.
Misty was saved just in the nick of time. Her euthanization was planned just 24 hours before her freedom ride.
“Misty had $450 worth of pledges to help her get out of the shelter because she was not getting the response she needed,” she explains.
Queenie, a heeler, was an owner surrender from the Salt Lake City Humane Society.
Heelers are known for their high energy levels and exceptional ranges of resourcefulness and intelligence.
Queenie was no different.
“As soon as she saw those bunnies, she went wild,” Struhs says.
Struhs sometimes houses her new furry friends in between transport legs. Misty and Queenie stayed the night.
Her brother picked them up the next morning to transport them to Second Chance Pet Rescue in Coeur d’Alene.
This first overnight out of the shelter was their first opportunity to decompress.
Struhs pointed out that shelters are very stressful for dogs because they hear barking all the time.
“They don’t get that time to just relax and be a dog and be loved on, so it’s really important,” she says.
Upon arriving home, she remembered what she was told earlier that day. Queenie is an escape artist.
During introductions to Struhs own dogs, she kept Queenie on a tight leash in the backyard. Eventually, Queenie got to run under Struhs watchful eye.
“I kept the leash on her just in case I had to grab her quickly,” she says.
Queenie and Misty made themselves right at home.
“Misty laid in my Lazy boy recliner and loved herself,” she says. Queenie quickly followed suit.
Fortunately for these two dogs, they got their day with the help of Struhs and her fellow rescuers.
Photo: Anna Struhs saying goodbye to Tink, who now lives with a loving family in Dillion, Montana.
Learning What You Do Not Know with Executive Director Kyle Loveland
Story and Photo by Jeremiah Kalb
Prolific poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once proclaimed, “In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I can learn from him.”
Ambulatory Services Executive Director Kyle Loveland has found great success in striving to live this principle throughout his career.
“I have benefited greatly by realizing that every person I work with is better in at least one way, often many than I am,” Loveland says. “I always learn something from each person I work with.”
He has used this success principle several times to get where he was as a hospital intern to presently providing Ambulatory Services leadership to about 100 employees and support for about 40 providers.
Raised in Colorado and Wyoming, Loveland did not grow up thinking he would find a career in healthcare.
“It wasn’t until my last few semesters of my undergrad that I realized there was even a business side of healthcare and that it might be a good fit for my business brain and my love of people,” he says.
After a hospital internship in 2011 and a series of position advancements as a front-line employee and leader, Loveland remembers when he was invited to apply for the Director of Nutritional Services position.
I laughed because I had zero experience in that position,” Loveland says.
While he held images of sharp knives, searing meats, bubbling pots, and the hustle of plating orders, the hospital did not want him to be a cook like he initially thought.
“I was told we need you to be able to fix the business side of things and improve there,” Loveland says.
He knew he could do that, applied, and got the job.
As a practitioner of the Shingo Model, based on the principles of Shigeo Shingo, who taught thousands of engineers at Toyota, Loveland started to address operational issues, but with a human touch.
“When you focus on and take care of the people, everything else seems to fall in place,” he says.
When one thinks of improving the bottom line, drill-downs on spreadsheets often come to mind first.
The first two principles of the Shingo Model are “Respect Every Individual” and “Lead with Humility.”
In the beginning, team members whispered, “Kyle does not know anything.”
Determined, Loveland would smile back and tell them they were absolutely right. “That’s why I’m going to shadow you,” he told them.
The first month Loveland started by following each employee through their workday.
He had a plan to learn and serve.
“I had three main questions,” he says. “I asked them, what do you love about your job? What do you not love about your job? And what would you change if you could about any process that you feel is broken?”
The response he received from his team was positive.
“First of all, I got comments like, I can’t believe you are here,” Loveland says. “You’re actually asking me what I think.”
With a clear starting point, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work, sometimes behind the grill and cash register.
When Loveland finished his work in the Paragon, they were on track to have higher revenue than in years past; then, the pandemic hit, forcing them to close their doors.
“I left it in great hands with Timmy and the rest of the team,” he says. They did a tremendous job throughout the pandemic.”
Today, Loveland is making great strides in his current role by continuing to build and foster relationships and learn who his people are and how he can best support them.
“Kyle is a pragmatic, process oriented, people person,” CNO Kevin McEwan says. “These are the attributes and characteristic that have led to our continued success.”
So we see that learning and growing go hand in hand.
Eliminating the “Bad Guys” with Central Sterile Supervisor Margaret Wood
Story and Photo by Jeremiah Kalb
Each year in the United States, there are approximately 53 million outpatient surgical procedures and 46 million inpatient surgical procedures.
All of these procedures introduce a significant risk to the patient – infection.
Bacteria like Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and Pseudomonas left on surgical instruments can infect the surgical site and lead to patients becoming gravely ill and requiring further medical attention following surgery.
If surgical instruments are not sterile, this may also mean spreading serious illnesses or diseases such as HIV/AIDs, Hepatitis, and more.
Central Sterile Processing Supervisor Margaret Wood’s job is to lead a mighty team of three technicians that help eliminate all pathogenic microorganisms.
Sterilization ensures that infectious pathogens do not transfer to the patient.
“Because of our work, patients can safely undergo surgery,” Wood explains.
She sees Central Sterile as a critical part of the hospital’s backbone.
It’s safe to say that patient safety begins in the Central Sterile Processing department, and the rest of the hospital would not be able to function without them.
Central Sterile Processing is the hospital area where cleaning, decontamination, inspection, assembly, packaging, storage, and distribution of instruments, equipment, and supplies takes place.
Wood, a 22-year veteran of sterile processing, runs the day-to-day operations for the department.
Her team handles upwards of 900 instrument sets each month.
Despite high productivity pressures, a total joint replacement alone can have anywhere between six and eight trays, and Wood’s team did 286 of these last year; they take pride in their work.
The mission is singular yet complex: to safeguard patients from infections.
“Behind every instrument, there’s a patient, and so we’re patient advocates,” she says.
Attention to detail is an absolute must every minute of every day for Wood and her team.
“We want to make sure every instrument in that set, whether it be ten or whether it be 100, is what’s supposed to be in that tray and is working properly,” Wood says.
Strict adherence to the “process” is imperative even when a surgeon drops an instrument and needs it back ASAP.
“You’re going to be waiting 25-30 minutes to get it back,” Wood says. “We try to have backups for things that could be dropped, but sometimes we just don’t.”
While a surgeon might expect the instrument back immediately, there’s no room for cutting corners.
“If that was your mother, your sister, your husband or wife, or child, would you want us to do it halfway, or would you want us to do it the proper way?” Wood asks.
The proper way includes hand washing and machine cleaning at 180 degrees. Instruments are then put through Steam, Parasitic Acid, or Hydrogen Peroxide sterilization.
Several types of test indicators are used to monitor whether the necessary conditions were met to kill a specified number of microorganisms for a given sterilization process.
“Having all these checks makes it so we as sterile processing people and the nurses and techs in the room know they can safely use these instruments,” she says.
There is much to be said about the thought and effort that goes into Wood’s carefully wrapped blue packages.
Matchmaking with Human Resources Recruiter Abigail Caldwell
Story and Photo by Jeremiah Kalb
There’s a line from the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye’s second daughter, Hodel, voices her wish that Yente looks through her book and make her a perfect match.
The story is set in early 20th century Russia but is not unlike the story that unfolds every day at the desk of one particular employee in the hospital.
Instead of the “matches” living in or around the little town of Anatevka, the “candidates” Human Resources recruiter Abigail “Abby” Caldwell is looking for can be found visiting Indeed.com or a few other job websites.
Caldwell’s applicant tracking software quickly posts jobs to the Indeed site, where 250 million people visit every month, giving her a link to the most talent in every field.
“We’ve been happy with the reach it can give us,” Caldwell says.
Before she posts a job, Caldwell makes sure she knows the position inside and out, including the person-environment fit.
By matching the right personality with the right job, the chances for better synergy, lower turnover, and higher job satisfaction are greater.
“If the hiring manager runs a very quiet department, putting a very loud person in there may not be the best thing,” she explains.
The telephone is Caldwell’s best friend when it comes to sizing up each applicant and their suitability for the organization. “A lot of phone conversations,” she says. “The more individuals call me, the more I get to know.”
Surprisingly, most of them call Caldwell asking her what they are qualified to do in the hospital.
“Most individuals’ exposure to hospitals are from sitcoms on TV,” she jokes.
At this stage in the matchmaking process, there’s a bit of helping the candidate adjust their lens to see better how a hospital actually operates and who does what.
“A lot of individuals do not realize that our nurses don’t do radiology, that we actually have radiology techs who do that,” she says. “And there’s schooling that’s associated with it.”
Once the facts are laid out on the table, Caldwell can begin to explore all the options with the applicant.
She often takes on the role of a ‘big sister’ with any applicant who wants to know what she knows.
“It’s a lot of going through and asking what is it that you like?” she says. Things like, “Tell me about yourself. What’s your dream job? If you’re trying to go this path, we can give it to you in this type of position.”
Caldwell has no problem steering someone away from nursing who does not like blood or asking someone to think twice about medical coding if they do not like staring at a computer screen all day long.
“It really goes back to just getting to know them,” she says.
Ultimately, the right personality and attitude beat skill any day for Caldwell. She likes to point out that every skill can be taught.
What’s the secret to landing a job at Madison?
Caldwell cites a great work ethic. “If we are all doing our best and patients are having a good experience, you can go anywhere in this hospital,” she says.
A good recruiting day for Caldwell is when directors and hiring managers come back to her and say, ‘I had a hard decision. I had to pick between two, and I liked them both.’
Whoever the hiring manager selects, she knows they need to be passionate about the end goal.
Whether it’s a nurse starting an IV or a housekeeper preparing a room for the next patient, they need to be passionate about creating a space for healing. “They need to want to make a difference,” Caldwell says.
High in the Sky with Radiologist Justin Lamb
By Jeremiah Kalb
Radiologist Justin Lamb’s favorite route to work requires much more forethought than most people give to their work commute. At least when the weather is good.
If Lamb has ten miles of visibility and clear skies, he prefers to strap into his pristine 1959 Cessna 180 and fly to one of his hospital assignments in Salmon, Driggs, or Afton, Wyoming.
At a cruising speed of 150 miles per hour and an altitude of 8,500 feet, the view of Eastern Idaho is spectacular in comparison to the bumper to bumper traffic found in Rexburg. “Flying from here to Salmon is just gorgeous,” Lamb says.
Nestled in the beautiful Lemhi Valley with the Beaverhead Mountains looming over, not many work commutes in the world can compare to what he sees out his cockpit window while in flight to Salmon.
Towering peaks, deep canyons, dense forests, big game, and the wild and scenic Salmon River always bring a smile to Lamb’s face.
After all, this is the backyard of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the “The River of No Return”- aptly named as Clark mindfully retraced his steps to look for a safer route after assessing and taking note of the mighty river.
Lamb chooses to be methodical and disciplined when it comes to deciding if it will be a fly day or not.
“If I need to go to Salmon on a Wednesday, I start looking at the weather on Sunday,” Lamb says.
He follows three rules to stay safe in the skies: Maintain your aircraft, stay proficient, and watch the weather. “If you have time to spare, go by air, meaning the weather might stop you,” he explains.
When Lamb first arrived in Rexburg back in 2007, he would drive past the airport each morning thinking he needed to go check the place out. After all, this is the sort of thing he did as a teenager back in Mesa, Arizona.
“Back then there were no gates and you could just ride your bike up and down the rows of hangars,” he says. If a hangar was open, he’d approach the pilot and strike up a conversation. “Pilots always want to show you their airplane and they’re generally pretty friendly people,” Lamb adds. Those early days at Falcon Field Airport solidified his dream of becoming a pilot one day.
Fortunately, Lamb’s flying bug survived the rigors of medical school, an internship, radiology residency, and a fellowship in Texas.
It was only matter of time before Lamb would be up in the air taking lessons from Lewis Hart, a well-respected and greatly admired aviator in the area. Hart saw the Teton Dam break from the air and completed a handful of rescue missions for some people stranded in the middle of a barley field, surrounded by swirling water.
“He’s just a great man,” Lamb says of Hart. The quality of Hart’s instruction is on display every time Lamb advances the throttle of his Cessna and quickly lifts into blue skies.
Despite Lamb’s home base being located in rural Idaho, his flight log is impressive for a single engine land and sea license holder: Nome, Alaska, Oshkosh, Wisconsin (AirVenture annual air show), the Bahamas, and many other stops in between.
The parallels between Lamb’s reading room and flying are strikingly similar. “When I pull up a CT of the chest or MRI of the brain, I look at the same structures every time in the same sequence,” he says. “And it’s the same with flying. I do it [checklist] the same way every time. Even if I don’t think it needs to be done.”
So we see that excellence both on the ground and in the air is not an act, but a habit.
Photo: Justin Lamb, D.O. (front) and Lewis Hart (back) inside their partially restored Piper J-3 Cub airplane.
Talking Japanese Cooking with Revenue Cycle Supervisor Brandon Sakota
By Jeremiah Kalb
The late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once said that if he were to be trapped in one city and had to eat one nation’s cuisine for the rest of his life, it would have to be Japanese.
Revenue Cycle Supervisor Brandon Sakota could not agree more.
One thing that sets Japanese cuisine apart from Chinese is the fresh use of ingredients and the healthy and light appearance of the food.
“Things are fried less,” Sakota says. “It’s cleaner eating.”
While Japanese food has become synonymous with sushi and tempura, it has much to offer in terms of slow-simmered stews, grilled skewers of meats and vegetables, savory pancakes, and endless noodles.
Sakota is a fourth-generation Rexburg resident with family roots that go back to Hiroshima, Japan.
His great-grandfather, Kisaburo Sakota, migrated to Eastern Idaho in 1915, where his family built a thriving enterprise farming grain, barley, and potatoes on 1,800 acres just north of Rexburg.
The internment of Japanese Americans after the events of Pearl Harbor shattered much of the Sakota Japanese culture. “Most of the Japanese people did everything to Americanize themselves, out of fear,” Sakota explains.
The only thing that remained for the Sakota family was their cooking.
By age 15, Sakota was learning how to cook Japanese from his mom and aunt. “For the more advanced stuff, my Aunt Carolyn started with the basic sushi rolls,” he says.
Sakota later moved to Salt Lake City for college, allowing him to go to numerous sushi restaurants. “That’s when I started eating raw tuna and more complicated sushi rolls,” he says.
Sakota would take a picture, go home, and try to make it.
It was not easy at first. “Rolling sushi is very hard,” Sakota says with a laugh.
This is why apprentices at Master Jiro’s three-Michelin-star Japanese restaurant devote ten years to perfecting their knife skills and learning how to press the sushi as if it were a baby chick.
Once Sakota got the hang of it, he started rolling sushi on the side for friends to help pay for some of his college expenses.
To make sure his housemates did not get in the way, Sakota would order them out of the apartment so he could own the kitchen for the evening. “It was a good gig,” he says. “I’d make anywhere from $300-$400 every two weeks.” That may not sound like much today, but it was life-saving for a cash-strapped college student. “Plus, it was something I enjoyed,” he adds.
Today, Sakota’s family is happy to sit back and let him roll all the sushi for their New Year’s Day feast which has numbered over 50 members. They set up tables all around the home of Sakota’s parents. “It’s the one tradition that makes us feel closest to our culture,” he says.
With the amount of thought and effort that goes into making sushi that one can be proud of, it’s no surprise that Sakota found his way into the revenue cycle as a career.
His duties include creating reports, analyzing data, identifying lost revenue, collecting payments, and implementing revenue cycle management (RCM) strategies to minimize losses. “You definitely have to be detail-oriented in both,” he says.