Clinical Program Manager Spotlight: Peter Strecker
Peter Strecker’s healthcare story began in high school. With exposure to pre-hospital care as an EMT in his late teens, Peter ultimately chose nursing school and gained invaluable experience in critical care and ED nursing. However, it wasn’t long before Peter’s passion for improving healthcare access led him beyond the bedside.
Peter Strecker Clinical Program Manager, Caregility
As an educator, Peter quickly realized he could have a greater impact by helping other nurses provide better care. “On a unit, I could impact a handful of patients,” Peter recalls. “But in education, I was teaching hundreds of nurses across the country how to provide better care for their patients.” This shift from direct patient care ignited a passion to improve access to the best possible care for as many patients as possible.
That passion evolved to virtual care about 10 years ago. Leveraging experience from roles with both vendors and health systems, Peter helps healthcare systems develop, implement and ultimately drive adoption of their virtual care strategy. “I love that every day I get to use technology to improve access to quality care for patients, anywhere, anytime.”
As the newest Clinical Program Manager at Caregility, Peter supports integrating virtual care into hospital workflows with a focus on leveraging the Control Hub to monitor and quantify the benefits of the Caregility Cloud™ virtual care platform. Drawing on his clinical background and experience in business development and healthcare IT working with many of the top health systems in the nation, Peter brings a unique perspective to his role.
Peter emphasizes that “patients want to see clinicians and clinicians want to see patients. The more conveniently we can facilitate that connection, the more likely we are to achieve successful and sustainable adoption.”
Looking ahead, Peter envisions a healthcare landscape that continues to move beyond the hospital walls to offer patients and care teams more flexibility.
“As reimbursement models and incentives continue to evolve, healthcare will naturally gravitate to providing the right level of care to the right patients at the right time.”
– Peter Strecker
Peter sees a future where care is delivered more efficiently and conveniently outside of the 4 walls of a healthcare facility in 8-minute appointment blocks. “With the explosion of chronic health issues, particularly in the US, wellness is largely about human behavior and helping individuals make better choices,” Peter notes. “While AI and ML improve by leaps and bounds every day, comforting patients and families, changing behaviors, and reinforcing long-term accountability will largely rely on human interactions for the foreseeable future.”
For healthcare organizations looking to implement virtual care programs, Peter offers practical advice. First and foremost, he emphasizes the importance of having stakeholders clearly define and articulate the problems they want to address. From there, robust ideation led by those stakeholders and end users will yield the most sustainable results. Peter also encourages organizations to be open to leveraging outside expertise.
Demonstrating meaningful outcomes—clinically, operationally, and financially—is critical; establishing benchmarks and baselines to measure success is essential. Develop a solid plan and strategy that meets those explicit objectives and goals.
In a field as dynamic and complex as virtual care, credibility is paramount and something Peter takes very seriously. Peter’s lifelong dedication to healthcare—from EMS to bedside nursing to being a trusted guide, helping navigate the evolving landscape of virtual care—is a testament to Peter’s commitment to bringing positive change in healthcare.
Interested in connecting with a Caregility Clinical Program Manager to discuss your virtual care strategy? Contact us today!
Nurse Spotlight: Heidi Steiner, DNP, RN-BC, NE-BC
It’s not uncommon to meet professionals inspired by their family legacy working in healthcare. Although Heidi Steiner grew up surrounded by a family of nurses – including her mother, aunt, cousin, and godmother – she initially resisted the unspoken pressure to tread a similar path. Instead, Heidi was drawn towards community health education. Her dream was to promote health, prevent illness, and keep people out of the hospital.
However, life often takes us in unexpected directions. As Heidi navigated her early career, she conceded to nursing, working as a hospital aide and later as a nurse extern. She grew to appreciate the hospital setting but her core passion always remained: educating people to prevent illness.
This led her to the rehabilitation side of nursing, where she found immense satisfaction in guiding patients and their families through recovery. As Heidi puts it, “The nurse is the quarterback for the team, ensuring patients and their families are equipped with knowledge and care tailored to their needs.”
After relocating to Michigan, Heidi advanced to a nursing leadership role managing a 24-bed inpatient rehabilitation unit. Her interest in collaboration, patient education, and interdisciplinary teams stood out. When the hospital introduced Cerner, Heidi stepped in to represent the nursing department and found herself immersed in the world of informatics, changing the course of her career yet again.
After spending several years leading healthcare teams through the adoption of electronic health records, and then acting as a consultant for Cerner, Heidi ventured into developing a cross-continuum patient education strategy at Trinity Health. Working on a patient engagement portal, she emphasized that hospital care is only a fragment of the patient’s healthcare journey. The real challenge? Ensuring sustained care and knowledge once the patient returns home.
Heidi’s journey eventually brought her to Caregility and the realm of virtual care. As a Product Manager for the company’s virtual clinical consultation software, she influences tech design, features, and strategies that directly affect patient and clinician end-users. Her goal remains consistent: supporting patients, families, and clinicians throughout the healthcare journey. She believes that technology empowers clinicians to deliver their best care.
“Our job as a technology company is to provide tools that empower clinicians to give the best care they can deliver. This aligns with my passions, which have always been working as a team, collaborating in the best interest of the patient and their family, and supporting clinicians to deliver excellent care.”
– Heidi Steiner
When asked about her ideal vision for healthcare, Heidi paints a picture of seamless health information sharing, patient-driven care plans, and more holistic approaches to meeting patient needs. She sees virtual care bridging the gaps in episodic care, providing continuous insight into patients’ health patterns, and introducing new pathways for earlier intervention when necessary.
Heidi’s advice for anyone looking to venture into virtual care? “Walk, then run. Planning is essential, as is stakeholder involvement and a clear roadmap. ID your KPIs upfront and conduct routine milestone tracking to evaluate the success of your program. Evaluate as you go so you can change course as needed.”
With her certification in nursing informatics and a doctorate degree, Heidi exemplifies the importance of continuous iteration and learning. Her story serves as an inspiring reminder that while legacy can light the way, it’s our individual choices, commitment, and adaptability that truly shape our journey. Whether you’re a nurse pursuing your passion or a patient navigating your care plan post-discharge, that’s timeless wisdom.
Interested in connecting with clinical experts to discuss your hybrid care strategy? Contact us today!
Nurse Spotlight: Irene Goliash, RN
For some, the call to care for others is a lifelong passion. One such individual is Irene Goliash, RN. Drawing inspiration from a nurturing home environment, including a mother who often cared for family members and an aunt who was a nurse, Irene always knew she wanted to be a caregiver.
She began her journey into healthcare at an early age. A neighbor who recognized Irene’s intrinsic desire to support others suggested she try her hand at a nursing home role, noting that if she could manage that, she could likely handle any challenge a career in nursing might throw at her. And Irene did just that. “Working as a nursing home CNA gave me my start in nursing, which I found deeply rewarding,” she says.
Irene Goliash, RN Clinical Program Manager, Caregility
After graduating from Alexandria Hospital School of Nursing, Irene stepped into her first registered nurse role at Washington Hospital Center, a 900+ bed tertiary care facility in D.C. “I started on the medical telemetry floor,” shares Irene. “I always knew I wanted to be in critical care. After gaining experience and becoming comfortable with cardiac rhythms, I moved into the ICU, primarily working in surgical, critical, trauma, neurosurgery, and cardiac surgery care.”
From there, Irene transitioned to a role as a Cardiovascular ICU nurse at Georgetown University Hospital. She spent the next seven years providing comprehensive nursing care, patient education, and discharge planning for cardiovascular surgical patients on a combined ICU/Stepdown unit. During her tenure at Georgetown, Irene served as a charge nurse for the entire unit, acted as a preceptor for nurses during orientation, and developed and implemented a unit-based Peer Review system.
Along the way, Irene’s robust nursing experience attracted the interest of health IT stakeholders. A significant turn in her career came when Irene joined Apache Medical Systems (acquired by Cerner) to oversee the development of clinical end-user training programs. Irene was later recruited by VISICU (acquired by Philips) where she would spend the next 16 years managing the clinical transformation process for clients adopting the eICU program.
Irene’s work and connections eventually led her to Caregility, where she currently serves as a Clinical Program Manager working to alleviate the burdens of bedside teams and ensure a smoother healthcare process for patients through telehealth enablement.
“I know from first-hand experience that sometimes at the bedside you feel like you’re just running around putting out fires,” Irene shares. “It’s easy to get burned out thinking of the list of things you didn’t do. I’m all about helping the bedside team. It’s about alleviating their pain points and making the job more satisfying. Both clinicians and patients should feel the benefit.”
“You can significantly improve patient, family, and staff satisfaction just by shifting clinical workload to someone who has time to devote to the specific activity.”
– Irene Goliash
For those looking to implement a virtual care program, Irene stresses the importance of multidisciplinary involvement. “Pull your direct caregivers into the process from the very beginning,” she advises. “Without their buy-in, no matter how good your program is, it will fail. One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen is when customers think it’s an IT project because of equipment procurement and installation, but it’s not. It truly is a clinical project.” Irene recommends involving clinicians when determining program goals, where to focus, and where you grow from there.
Irene sees tremendous potential in emerging virtual nursing programs. She encourages healthcare organizations exploring the hybrid care model to “start small and take baby steps. You don’t have to come in and save the world. Maybe the best thing I can do as a virtual nurse is record your code for you or do the documentation or page people. Let me do the more mundane things so you can focus on hands-on patient care.”
“All it takes is one big win to prove the value,” Irene elaborates. “This can be particularly beneficial in areas where there is just not enough time to devote to things like patient education. We’re often dinged there by patients and families. Having a remote nurse resource who can teach without interruption is a great way to improve that.”
Irene envisions a future where every care team encompasses both bedside and virtual nurses. “Virtual roles can be a great way to harness the experience of nurses who have the knowledge but may not be physically up to a 12-hour shift, which is harder as you get older, keeping 20 to 30 years of nursing experience in my health system to support my bedside team.”Virtual roles can also be outsourced in rural areas where staffing shortages may leave facilities hard-pressed to pull from existing staff.
Irene’s journey is a testament to the limitless potential and adaptability of nursing. She continues to hone her skills as a member of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and in her work with ATA developing TeleICU nursing guidelines.
As healthcare pivots to a more integrated approach to virtual care, the experiences and insights of nurse professionals like Irene will continue to illuminate the path to better supporting our patients and bedside teams, retaining experienced clinicians, and innovating care delivery.
Interested in connecting with a Caregility Clinical Program Manager to discuss your hybrid care strategy? Contact us today!
Nurse Spotlight: Sarah Lake, MS, RN, CCRN
Many would agree that the nursing profession isn’t for the faint of heart. RNs see it all. Although Sarah Lake, MS, RN, CCRN, didn’t initially set out to be a nurse, her early years working in the criminal justice system offered plenty of parallels.
Sarah first pursued undergraduate studies in political science and criminal justice, earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of South Dakota (USD). The Sioux Falls native then held positions as a correctional officer and a court services officer, doing what she describes as “the equivalent of felony probation and supervision for community members who don’t go to prison.”
Sarah Lake, MS, RN, CCRN Clinical Program Manager, Caregility
Like the clinical work she’d eventually embark on, Sarah’s Corrections roles operated under a paradigm that put emphasis on prevention through early intervention. The challenge was that she oversaw a population that was profoundly underserved with no access to social services. Sarah recognized that the lack of support services was an impediment to her ability to adequately help those in her community. This point of frustration led her back to school to find a different way she could help.
Sarah earned her nursing degree at USD intending to go into community, public, or mental health. After a preceptorship at the Department of Health setting up points of distribution during H1N1, she landed a critical access nursing role in Chamberlain, SD, at Sanford Chamberlain, ultimately returning to Pierre, her home community, with a role in Avera St. Mary Hospital’s ICU. That role introduced Sarah to a relatively new theory of care. Avera St. Mary’s eICU program allowed patients to receive services from remote clinicians while remaining close to home and family.
“The hospital had an eICU system that allowed clinicians to push a button to get instant access to intensivists and critical care nurses to help take care of critical patients whom we would have otherwise had to transport to tertiary care,” Sarah explains. “When I pushed the button for the first time [to get help] on a drip I was unsure of, I was sold.” Sarah immediately recognized the potential that virtual care posed to broader use cases.
“The thing I am the most passionate about is improving the delivery of patient care.”
– Sarah Lake
“During my career, I did temp work outside of hospitals and worked as a flight nurse, but I always came back to the eICU at Avel eCare (then Avera eCare) because I liked virtual care’s ability to give folks world-class care in their home community. When I came back to work full time in the Sioux Falls area at Avel eCare, one of the service lines was a multi-specialty clinic offering specialties to IHS. Sixty percent of the services we were supporting were mental health or psych related – precisely the kind of services I thought we needed when I was in Corrections.”
When COVID-19 hit, Sarah and her team again turned to telehealth to remotely support patients isolated at home. It wasn’t long before Sarah was recruited by Caregility to put her virtual care experience to work supporting hospitals across the nation looking to follow suit. Today, Sarah helps health systems hone their telehealth strategy, design virtual clinical workflows, and stand up EMR-integrated programs that improve care delivery for patients and providers.
Sarah sees hybrid care fueling what’s possible in healthcare. That includes the ability to support remote family involvement or group visits, patient and staff education, and patient monitoring as an added safety layer and another way to build relationships with patients.
“Post-COVID, patients are sicker and there aren’t as many clinicians available to take care of them,” Sarah notes. “Adopting a virtual nurse is one way teams can meet in the middle. Medicine is also getting much smarter. Wearables and home-based apps have tremendous potential to further personalize care and proactively improve outcomes. Increased use of AI will not only enhance care delivery but also optimize operations. It will account for things people don’t think about when they’re putting patients into beds – like higher fall risk if the patient is placed at the end of the hall – to support the best utilization of space. What locations are best for the recovery of specific conditions? What staff do we have to take care of them? We’ll see the use of AI in those operations.”
For those looking to implement a virtual care program, Sarah offers five points of advice:
Work with a multidisciplinary team including clinical, administrative, and IT stakeholders to define your goals and objectives based on your unique pain points.
Conduct a feasibility study to determine what it will take to launch your program. Consider time and resource requirements, seeking outside expertise as needed.
Define your clinical protocol. Demonstrate ways the solution will benefit patients, lighten staff workload, and foster new professional development skills among staff who will use the tools.
Select technology that supports your identified workflows. Will telehealth endpoints be cart-based or wall-mounted? What integrations are desired? Be mindful of regulatory compliance and network factors.
Iterate and re-iterate constantly.
“Virtual care and telehealth bring us to a whole new level of being able to deliver care to absolutely everybody in a quick, cost-effective manner, even in geographically isolated communities with socioeconomic struggles,” says Sarah. “Today we can have a diabetes patient see a world-class endocrinologist at home on an iPhone. Virtual care lessons I’ve learned along the way have only broadened what I see as the future potential.”
Interested in connecting with a Caregility Clinical Program Manager to discuss your hybrid care strategy? Contact us today!
