New CEO Chris Lee talks to first day at Colorado VNA

My first day at Colorado Visiting Nurse Association

By Christopher Lee, President & CEO

And so begins an exciting new phase in my career…my new role as President and CEO for Colorado VNA. I have been blessed with many exciting opportunities in my career and this one ranks as the most exciting. I am just finishing up my position as General Manager for SCL Home Health Solutions (SCLHHS), which is SCL/Exempla’s home health company. It has been a challenging position, but one that has provided a significant perspective on the complexities of running a mission-based home health organization. I have also learned a lot about the importance and power of partnering with hospitals and payers in order to provide integrated care across the continuum. As I am sure many of you know, health systems and payers have not always thought of non-facility-based care as an important part of the care continuum! Things have changed!

Prior to SCLHHS I was in charge of business development for Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette where I was responsible for helping the hospital grow by expanding and improving various service lines. In addition to business development I ran the medical imaging department for over seven years and was part of the original leadership team that opened the hospital in 2004. It was at Good Samaritan that I learned from some amazing leaders and role models, specifically Beth Forsyth (COO) and Dave Hamm (CEO). Beth and Dave taught me numerous lessons about leadership and the importance of listening to front line and supervisory staff as a way to improve care for patients and increase staff satisfaction. I also spent a lot of time working on and leading performance improvement projects across the hospital. These projects were focused on improving the efficiency and performance of processes in order to make care for patients safer and more efficient.

Throughout my career I have had the support of a wonderful wife and my 12 year old twin boys and 9 year old daughter. They all keep me busy outside of work and fortunately have helped provide work-life balance.  Being able to help drive the kids back and forth between baseball, soccer, track and other various activities keeps me extremely busy outside of work. In addition to family activities I do enjoy taking advantage of what Colorado has to offer by spending time on the trails and roads on my bike as well as logging some miles running to stay in shape. We live in a beautiful place and exploring on foot or on wheels provides a significant amount of inspiration for me to do my best at work.

I hope the above has provided a brief summary of my background and an overview of the perspective I bring to CVNA. I also invite you to see the press release about my new role as additional reference.

Stay tuned for more posts in the future!