Following a summer of upheaval and deadly protests in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd, Allina Health signed a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion with dozens of other large Minnesota companies.
Allina CEO Dr. Penny Wheeler talked about the pact on the local news.
It’s the kind of thing that usually makes Atum Azzahir, a longtime community organizer and a Black woman, skeptical.
But this was different. Azzahir, CEO of the Minneapolis not-for-profit Cultural Wellness Center, had worked with Wheeler for years on projects designed to improve health and wellbeing for people in the City of Lakes, where Allina Health is headquartered.
In other words, Azzahir knew Wheeler was the real deal.
“Now, during the period that we’ve all been suffering, she continues to be accessible, vulnerable and available,” Azzahir said. “That’s her leadership model.”
Plenty of CEOs tout their commitments to health equity in news releases and interviews, but community leaders in Minneapolis say Wheeler walks the walk. Her leadership has been especially important in a region forever changed by a string of high-profile killings at the hands of police and the historic global pandemic, community leaders said.
Now, as Wheeler prepares to retire after seven years in 11-hospital Allina Health’s top job, Azzahir and others are discussing how her successor, current Chief Operating Officer Lisa Shannon, will continue carrying out the mission to eliminate racism in healthcare.
Wheeler will remain on Allina Health’s board after she steps down at the end of the year. There’s still work ahead, she said in an interview.
“We have to lead in healing, because this community was devastated,” Wheeler said. “Outside our walls, it’s rebuilding, but there was rubble for many, many months. Being a part of supporting the community in its healing and rebuilding is hugely important to us.”
Born at Allina Health’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Wheeler jokes that she’s spent 63 years at Allina Health. She also describes herself as a “triple Gopher” having received her undergraduate, medical and residency educations at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Wheeler spent more than two decades practicing as an obstetrician-gynecologist at Allina Health before becoming the system’s chief clinical officer and, finally, its first female and physician CEO in 2014.
Female CEOs continue to be a rarity at the country’s largest not-for-profit health systems, and they make less than their male peers, a Modern Healthcare analysis found. Wheeler’s total compensation was about $2.7 million in 2019, the latest year for which data are available. Male CEOs’ total compensation averaged $4.9 million at the 50 largest not-for-profit health systems in 2018, the year of Modern Healthcare’s report. For female CEOs, it was $3.3 million.
Allina Health relocated its headquarters in 2005 to a building that houses a global market and cultural center surrounded by neighborhoods struggling with health inequity. The office is just blocks from the site where a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in May 2020.
During the pandemic, Allina Health welcomed dozens of first- to 12th-grade students into two empty floors of its headquarters for remote learning. The health system was down to only about 100 core staff members working in the building, from about 1,300 pre-pandemic, so there was a lot of open space.
“Those are the kinds of things that we, being woven into the community, can be part of,” Wheeler said. “That’s core to our mission.”
The Real Minneapolis, a relatively new not-for-profit that helped organize the remote learning program, had struggled to find space to rent. The city, Hennepin County and private businesses had already rejected the organization’s proposals by the time it turned to Allina Health, which handed over 80 offices plus conference rooms free of charge.
Valerie Quintana, co-founder of the Real Minneapolis, met Wheeler at the learning center’s grand opening in last November. “What an amazing, supportive force of energy,” she said. “You can tell this is not smoke and mirrors.”
Wheeler also led through a personal tragedy. Her 21-year-old daughter, Olivia Chutich, died of excessive drinking and exposure to cold outside her Iowa sorority house in January. Wheeler and her wife, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Margaret Chutich, had adopted Olivia, who was from Guatemala.
“It’s one of those things that when you’ve had a loss like this, there’s no getting over it, there’s only learning to carry it,” Wheeler said. “So I’m still learning, frankly, on that score.”
Wheeler credits her team for ably taking the reins when she had to step away after her daughter’s death.
Then the following month, a disgruntled former patient shot five staff members at an Allina Health clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota, killing one.
Even though Wheeler was in the throes of grief herself, she knew she had to reach out to the victims and their families. Wheeler visited Buffalo while three victims were still in the operating room. One of the victims’ daughters “draped herself over me,” she said.
“She said, ‘I know you. I’m so sorry about your daughter,'” Wheeler said. “And I said, ‘I’m so sorry about your mom.’ It was a moment I’ll never forget.”
Despite all that’s happened, Wheeler said her retirement was planned before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. She wanted to ensure a smooth transition, given all the disruption the staff is already experiencing, she said.
“I hope I can continue to help the healing of this community,” Wheeler said,
During her tenure, Wheeler tried to reorient Allina Health’s revenue around keeping people healthy instead of reacting when they’re sick, an evolution that’s been painfully slow industrywide. Today, Wheeler said almost 40% of the health system’s commercial and Medicare revenue is tied to value-based arrangements.
Under Wheeler’s watch, Allina Health entered a six-year value-based payment model with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and a jointly owned insurance venture with Aetna. It also has a five-year, value-based partnership with HealthPartners, which is both an insurer and healthcare provider.
But those arrangements don’t appear to be boosting the bottom line, at least not yet. Allina Health lost $36 million on almost $4.4 billion in revenue in 2020. While the pandemic’s stranglehold on volumes contributed to 2020’s operating loss, the not-for-profit system’s margin had been growing slimmer over the years: from 4% in 2015 to 1.4% in 2019.
Allina Health has weathered a fair amount of costly labor disputes under Wheeler’s watch. About 4,800 nurses from five Allina Health hospitals went on a five-week strike in 2016. Health benefits were the major sticking point. In the contract the parties ultimately approved, the health system agreed to contribute more to nurses’ health savings accounts or health reimbursement arrangements, depending on their insurance plans. Strike-related expenses put a dent in Allina Health’s operating margin that year.
More recently, the health system narrowly averted another strike in April over a contract covering 4,000 Service Employees International Union members working at eight facilities. The union’s members voted to authorize a strike, but the two sides ultimately reached a deal in time to avoid one.
The Minnesota Nurses Association wished Wheeler well in her retirement in a statement, and expressed hope that her successor will be more open to union workers’ pleas. “Minnesota nurses hope that new leadership will mean a new direction for management to bargain in good faith for a fair contract, safe staffing levels and the resources and support nurses need to continue to provide excellent patient care on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the union wrote.
Minnesota is dominated by not-for-profit healthcare providers and health plans, and Wheeler exemplifies the spirit of collaboration that exists among their leaders, said Andrea Walsh, CEO of HealthPartners, based in Bloomington, Minnesota.
“We’re both competitors and collaborators, and we’re proud of that fact,” Walsh said. Wheeler has a heart for community service, and challenges people to do better, Walsh said.
Modern Healthcare has honored Wheeler with many awards during her time as CEO, including a 2021 Luminary in the Top 25 Women Leaders, and she appeared on the list of the 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, and the list of the 100 Most Influential in 2018, 2019 and 2020.