Finalists named for Health Care Heroes Awards
There were a record number of submissions this year for the annual Memphis Business Journal Health Care Heroes Awards, and a record number of new contenders. So even after the fifth round of selecting finalists, the breadth and depth of the local health care industry is still being probed.
The Health Care Heroes Awards is a yearly event that recognizes people in the healing arts who go above and beyond the norm.
And there's some intriguing patterns in this year's finalists.
In the category of Administrative Excellence, all but one finalist is a hospital executive. The other, Lee Booth of Nursing Innovations, is an entrepreneur and was a finalist earlier this year in MBJ's Small Business Awards.
In Community Outreach, there's a for-profit apartment company that's sponsored extraordinary health care initiatives completely unrelated to the housing industry. This category also has the first-ever lawyer for the awards, an immigration expert who's found a way to alleviate the physician shortage in rural areas.
The Innovations category includes research and clinical care. One finalist, surgeon Thom Lobe, was at the forefront of laparoscopic surgery a decade ago and is now leading the way in robotic surgery.
Among Health Care Providers (Non-Physician) we have two nurses and two people who work in very different areas of mental health.
In Health Care Provider (Physician) there are two surgeons, an oncologist with a passion to stop pain and an internist dedicated to training tomorrow's doctors.
In the Lifetime Achievement category, which includes James Pate, whose surgical discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s made much of Lobe's work possible later on. There's also Dick Shadyac, the best friend of Danny Thomas who's dedicated his life to making sure that St. Jude has always had money in the bank.
Independent judges will evaluate the finalists and select a recipient for the award in each category. The awards banquet will be Sept. 4 at the Park Vista Hotel.
Here's a complete list of finalists:
Administrative Excellence:
David L. Archer, president & CEO, Saint Francis Hospital
Lee Booth, CEO, Nursing Innovations, Inc.
Robert S. Gordon, executive vice president and chief administrative officer, Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp.
Cecelia Wilson Sawyer, senior vice president, administrator, Methodist-University Hospital
Community Outreach:
Hope House, Betty DuPont, executive director
Mid-America Apartment Communities, Frank McRae, director
Para los Ninos, Gail Beeman, principal investigator; Marian Levy, co-investigator; Espi Ralston, project coordinator
Gregory Siskind, partner, Siskind Susser, Attorneys at Law
Health Care Innovations:
John Coleman, vice president, Therapeutics Production & Quality, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Genome Explorations, Divyen Patel, CEO, and Arno Justman, chief operating officer
Thom E. Lobe, professor and chair, Section of Pediatric Surgery, UT Health Science Center and Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center
Gary L. Murray, cardiologist and president of Murray Heart Clinic
Health Care Provider (Non-Physician):
Debra J. Barnes, chief flight nurse, Hospital Wing of Memphis
Linda K. Oxford, clinical director, AGAPE Child & Family Services
Patricia Webb-Murphy, nurse, Shelby County Health Department
Edward A. Wise, executive director, Mental Health Resources
Health Care Provider (Physician):
Neal Beckford, otolaryngologist, Otolaryngology Associates of the Mid-South
Tim Fabian, chairman of the Department of Surgery, UT-Memphis
Stephen T. Miller, internist and vice president of Medical Education & Research, Methodist-University Hospital; associate dean, UT College of Medicine
Lee S. Schwartzberg, medical oncologist, medical director and senior partner, The West Clinic
Lifetime Achievement:
Russell W. Chesney, pediatrician, professor and chair of the UT Department of Pediatrics
Larry Johnson, OB/GYN, Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women
James W. Pate, surgeon, UT Department of Surgery
Richard C. Shadyac, national executive director of ALSAC
