Cancer causes St. Charles company to change focus

Michelle Rathman battled malignant melanoma skin cancer and then the early stages of breast cancer. The president of Impact Communications says the experience changed her life on so many levels, including altering the focus of her business.

"Cancer was the best gift I ever received. I realized that this was my calling," Rathman said.

The experiences she encountered as a cancer patient prompted her to analyze and then change her marketing company that mainly focused on promoting authors at the time.

Rathman, 49, had her surgery for the advanced skin cancer at University of Illinois Medical Center, which became one of her first clients. "I did their marketing and events," she said. Through that work, she then formed a relationship with Galena Hospital. This led to specializing in critical access hospitals, which are often small, rural facilities.

"I started immersing myself in health care," Rathman said. Her company now focuses on facilitating change in hospitals, whether through communication or culture.

"I found a niche in rural hospitals," said Rathman, who travels three weeks a month to "critical access" hospitals across the country. These hospitals are certified under a set of Medicare conditions, which are different from an acute care hospital. There are 51 of the critical access hospitals in Illinois.

In taking on this mission, Rathman has formed a team of doctors, psychologists and a former hospital CEO. "I focus on strategy and communication and the members of my team focus on the clinical, quality side," Rathman said.

She explained that they work with hospitals that are struggling, whether it be high doctor turnover, a low ranking or the need for tax support. "When a hospital is challenged, we get the call. I do an assessment and we create a custom solution," she said.

Rathman stresses that she takes it a step further and teaches how to facilitate the needed changes. When she is done working with a hospital, there is a huge feeling of accomplishment.

Rathman worked with a hospital team in Oregon, tasked with improving the culture. Multiple steps were taken. She held 16 eight-hour retreats with all 700 employees, or caregivers. At the end of the retreats, participants were given a box with a piece of canvas painted in an array of colors, a bag of glass and ceramic tiles and basic instructions to glue their tiles onto the canvas according to a specific color palette and pattern, without knowing what the result would be.

The end result was a caregivers tree mosaic that hangs at the hospital. A nurse at the hospital said it represents how every person in the organization contributed to the end result. "Every department had a piece of that mural; just like every department is part of the patient's care, no matter how small a piece that is," said Kelly Roman, a supervisor in the hospital's medical surgical unit.

Hospital transformation

Renovations have started at the former St. Charles Hospital in downtown Aurora, transforming the historic art deco building into a 60-unit independent living facility for seniors.

VeriGreen, a division of Evergreen Real Estate Group, collaborated with Invest Aurora, the Northern Lights Development Corp., the City of Aurora, the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, along with several private lenders and investors, to secure the project's complicated layers of financing and tax credits.

Designed by Wybe J. Van der Meer, the former hospital at 400 E. New York St. - directly across from McCarty Park - was completed in 1932, with additional renovations made to the interior of the structure in the decades that followed. Most recently home to the Fox River Pavilion Nursing Home, the building has been vacant since 2010, the year it was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

Last fall, the property was added to the River Edge Redevelopment Zone, created in 2006 by the state of Illinois to stimulate the development of environmentally challenged properties adjacent to or surrounding rivers using state tax incentives and grants. The program will provide approximately $3 million that will be put toward the project's $24 million development cost. The balance will be funded using a combination of federal historic tax credits, low-income housing tax credits from the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and private financing.

First move-ins at Aurora St. Charles Senior Living are scheduled for the end of 2016. The 60 new rental homes, which include a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, will also offer several shared amenity spaces, including a large community room in the hospital's former chapel that will include a library/reading room and computer room.