From team captain on his peewee baseball and football teams to being the IU Health Southern Indiana Physicians Primary Care service line medical executive, Mike Teague, MD, tends to find himself in leadership positions almost accidentally

“I didn’t come to Bloomington thinking I was going to be the primary care leader,” says the IU Health South Central Region Values Leadership Award–Medical Staff winner. “I thought I would just see patients and go home, but then there was a need, which kind of snowballed into the role I’m in now.”

Teague’s overall goal as a service line leader is to serve the more than 100,000 patients who live in the South Central Region, and he knew when moving into this role that his team needed more providers to care for the population effectively.

“Dr. Teague has been instrumental in improving access to adult primary care within the South Central Region,” says a team member who nominated Teague for the Values Leadership Award.

“Watching as we were onboarding more highly-trained and qualified physicians and nurse practitioners into our mix and watching the median lag time go down has been great,” says Teague. “Reducing the time that new patients have to wait, on average, by three months is a massive accomplishment.”

The second most important part of his leadership duties has been working on processes to serve patients better and identifying other provider-leaders who want to help in these efforts.

“I feel like we have an excellent leadership team, which has been a lot of fun to build,” says Teague. “Very intentionally, we’ve got leaders with different strengths and weaknesses, and we complement each other very well.”

This team approach is very important to the primary care provider, who explains that everyone has to do their part to serve their community—from the person checking in patients, the medical assistant who rooms the individuals, the janitor who cleans and disinfects the facility, the providers providing diagnostic and therapeutic instruction, and everyone in between.

Teague says, “You can’t progress towards your purpose in medicine if you’re not working together, and you’re never going to achieve excellence and medicine and foreign medical care without a group of people. You can’t do it yourself.”

The group has taken this team focus a step further by implementing a team-based care model incorporating physicians, advanced practice providers, pharmacists and immediate access providers for patient care. And the ideas for improvement aren’t stopping there.

“There’s a lot of good work to be done,” says Teague. “I see it as my responsibility to continue to adjust how we provide care in the primary care world to benefit the over 100,000 people that live from Martinsville down to French Lick and from Spencer to Nashville.”

This week’s surprise compliment goes to Laura Hardebeck, who works in the OR at IU Health North Hospital. “Laura is an awesome friend and co-worker. I’m so grateful to have the pleasure of working with her!”

Samuel and Autumn Ford found out their son Shepherd, 7, had a rare genetic condition called adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, when he was born. After testing, Fords’ older son, Ransom, 10, was diagnosed as well. ALD can cause the buildup of very long-chain fatty acids in the brain. If a buildup occurs, it can cause damage to the myelin sheath, the membrane that covers nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. This can lead to lesions in the brain that can cause severe symptoms.

For children, symptoms typically present between ages four and ten. If left untreated, ALD can lead to loss of vision, loss of hearing, seizures, and more. In some cases, it can even lead to death.

The Fords travel to Carmel multiple times per year for appointments with their pediatric neurologist, Dr. Laurence Walsh, at Riley Pediatric Neurology on N Meridian Street. They also visit Riley Children’s Health at IU Health North for twice-yearly MRIs as a preventative measure.

“We’ve just had really great doctors, really great nurses,” Autumn says. “It’s been fantastic. The kids know who they’re going to see when they come in, so I think it helps them.”

In third grade, Joetta McKissack met James McKissack, and she knew then he was her soulmate. Years later, the pair was in high school James asked her on a date. Now, over half a century later, the couple is still together with kids and grandkids all around the state.

When James was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in, he needed more assistance than McKissack was able to provide. The couple made the difficult decision to move him into a care facility in 2022, but McKissack continued to visit him daily.

In the spring of 2023, she started having pain in her back that went down her leg which made it challenging to stand and move.

McKissack knew she couldn’t keep living with the pain, so she reached out to Scott Taylor, MD, pain medicine. With his help, she received a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-rays. He found a cyst behind the vertebrae.

Dr. Taylor referred her to her next surgeon for a spinal fusion. “I asked Dr. Taylor if there were any other solutions,” she says, “I didn’t want a serious spinal fusion.” At her request, Dr. Taylor then recommended David J. Hart, MD, neurosurgeon, IU Health Ball.

Upon reviewing her imaging, Dr. Hart determined the cyst put pressure on the nerves and a laminectomy to remove part of the vertebra and the cyst would fix her pain.

“He was so kind, and everyone there was thoughtful and caring,” she says. “Dr. Hart never made me feel rushed. He made sure I understood everything and would go into detail when necessary. I wasn’t even nervous going in the day of surgery.”

On the morning of the operation, McKissack’s son drove her to the hospital. By the afternoon, McKissack had recovered from the anesthesia and was released. She was shocked by how successful the surgery was and how painless it was to walk again.

“I had no pain at all during recovery,” says McKissack, “It was beyond my expectations, way beyond my expectations.”

Within a few days McKissack returned to her daily visits with her husband at the care facility. She had missed him and was happy to be reunited. Finally pain-free, McKissack now looks forward to spending time with her soulmate and reminiscing on their 61 years of marriage.

By Emma Avila, epackard1@iuhealth.org, writer for IU Health’s Indianapolis Suburban Region

IU Health’s Fresh & Fit program, a 10-week health initiative focusing on exercise and nutrition, has profoundly transformed participant Robin Sawyer’s life.

When Robin Sawyer first heard about the IU Health Fresh & Fit program, she thought it was too good to be true. She saw a post on Facebook advertising the 10-week free program to help improve participants’ health through exercise and nutrition and thought it couldn’t be real. Little did she know that program would drastically change her health and her life.

“I was hesitant until I saw it was actually through IU Health,” she explains. “Then I was really excited about it because I was looking for a good program.”

Fresh & Fit is a free virtual 10-week program designed to help participants get moving, eat healthy and improve their well-being. IU Health North, Saxony, Tipton and West hospitals designed a program that combines exciting workouts, nutrition, health screenings and consistent motivation that result in healthy lifestyle changes.

Caitlin Vendely, a Community Outreach consultant for IU Health’s Indianapolis Suburban Region, is on the team overseeing the program.

“When selecting participants, we look for in-need and underserved individuals who are interested in improving their health,” she says. “Applicants must indicate their willingness to fully commit to 10 weeks of fitness classes, a nutrition plan and two health screenings. As a part of the application process, they must answer questions about their health, specifically regarding cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and weight as well as questions regarding household size and income to ensure that we reach community members who may not otherwise have the means to participate in a fitness and nutrition program.”

Sawyer, a Fishers resident, met the criteria and was accepted into the program.

To start, participants met at one of the hospitals near their home and went through their first health screening. The team noted their starting weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, HDL, LDL, glucose and A1C baseline numbers to track each person’s progress.

“The Community Outreach team also provides equipment at the beginning of the program to set participants up for success,” Vendely adds. “Each participant receives an at-home blood pressure monitor, a set of exercise resistance bands and a participant packet with helpful information regarding the program and nutrition plan.”

From there, participants can download an app to engage with the program or they can choose to use the app’s desktop version.

Sawyer used the app to do her virtual workouts and follow the nutrition plan.

“The app gives you so much information, it’s unbelievable,” she says. “It gives you recipes and all kinds of diet info. You have to check in every single day, and it gives you a short lesson. You also have to check in if you’ve done that day’s work out or not.”

For the daily workouts, educational lessons and nutritional questions, IU Health partners with R3 Fitness. This is the fifth year IU Health has offered Fresh & Fit.

For Sawyer, she felt the program was set up to meet everyone where they were at. She had never consistently worked out before Fresh & Fit and was glad the program took that into consideration.

“I was starting from zero. They give you so many modifications because many people, including myself, may not have been working out,” she says.

And she isn’t alone.

“Many Fresh & Fit participants have never stepped foot in a gym nor monitored their nutrition before beginning the program. A large quantity of these individuals are also on medications to monitor their blood pressure, cholesterol and other health conditions,” Vendely says.

Sawyer hoped the program would improve her overall health, with a special focus on her cholesterol. She was determined to give the program her all. Within the 10 weeks, she completed every required workout and stuck to her nutrition plan.

Her results reflect her commitment.

“I gave it my everything and at the end, I lost 24 pounds and my cholesterol went down 80 points,” she says. “I’m just so incredibly genuinely impressed with my weight loss and the magnitude of change in my blood levels in such a short period of time.”

And she isn’t planning to stop now that the program is over. She feels the lessons she learned along the way will help make her lifestyle changes sustainable.

In fact, many participants feel the same way.

“One hundred percent of Hamilton County’s participants who completed the post-program survey state that they will continue to follow both a fitness and nutrition regimen after program completion,” Vendely adds. “Part of IU Health’s mission is to create strong and healthy communities across the state. Fresh & Fit does exactly that by impacting the lives of hundreds of community members in-need by helping them build healthy lifestyles that can be maintained for the long-term.”

Now, Sawyer hopes to encourage others to focus on their health as well.

“Health is just so important, and many people put it off like I did. This really got me back on track.”

To learn more about the Fresh & Fit program, click here. IU Health will begin accepting applications for next year’s program in early 2024.

If you find your way to IU Health Tipton Paisley might be one of the team members to greet you at the door. She’s the hospital’s new therapy dog, a 2-year-old Bernedoodle who loves nothing more than to take away stress by delivering smiles.

Shortly after being named director of Imaging at IU Health West, Will Sexton was called to serve his country. Now that he’s returned from active duty, he’s getting to know his team.

By Charlotte Stefanski, cstefanski@iuhealth.org, writer for IU Health’s Indianapolis Suburban Region

Will Sexton has always been drawn to the human body—how it works and the science behind it.

“Sports and human movement were always interesting to me. It just made sense to me,” Sexton says.

When he enrolled at Indiana University, he studied Kinesiology, the science of movement, and Exercise Science for his undergraduate degree, and then went to get his Master’s in Exercise Physiology.

But those weren’t his only interests. Sexton had always wanted to enlist in the military.

“I had always wanted to, but my mother was always afraid of it, so she tried to talk me out of it,” Sexton explains. “But I still had that itch.”

He officially joined the United States Army in 2003, and for the next 13 years, 10 months and 25 days (not that he counted) he would be on active duty.

But after that stint, his family of five decided it was time to settle down somewhere. First, Sexton took an assistant director of Imaging position at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Four years later, he moved back to Indiana, and joined Terre Haute Regional Hospital as director of Imaging Services and Special Diagnostics. His family lived in Avon because his wife was a teacher in Zionsville and IU Health West seemed like the perfect fit for him.

“I was like, ‘Man, I’d love to get an opportunity there,’ and then about a year and a half later, it opened up and I was like, ‘Oh, I have to,’” Sexton says. “I felt very fortunate to get that opportunity.”

Sexton officially joined the IU Health West team as director of Imaging Services in August 2022, but within the span of a few weeks, active duty would call again, and he was off to Kuwait.

One year later, he’s officially back and working to get reacquainted with the West team.

Discovering imaging in the Army

Sexton was 29 with a child on the way when he first enlisted in the Army, and while leaping out of planes looked fun, he decided to stay in the medical field to grow and share his expertise.

The Army had a wide array of roles—both in and out of healthcare—and radiology peaked his interest. As someone who had broken bones and had strains, it seemed like the perfect field for Sexton.

His traditional schooling in Indiana was much different from training in the military, and he explains that the military streamlines all its medical training, whereas in college, students have plenty of book work and get a deep understanding and a lot of knowledge from the readings.

“In the Army, everything is very cut and dry. It’s like, ‘This is what we do.’ It’s a methodology more than anything,” Sexton says. “You’re thrown into it and expected to perform, and so your development and your knowledge comes from your experiences, versus learning from a book.”

Luckily for Sexton, he already had in-depth knowledge about the body and bones from schooling. While others had trouble with terms and names, he was on top of it.

His first duty station was in Grafenwöhr, Germany, where he was the only x-ray technologist for his first three years. Eventually, the team grew to five and shot about 20 – 25 films per day, which gave him plenty of free time.

“I put my thoughts and my energies elsewhere. I became our compliance officer and I wore a lot of different hats over there,” he says. “I worked with nursing, I worked with doctors, I stayed up on the compliance for both those fields.”

Sexton then went on to receive training in nuclear medicine with both the U.S. Navy and went through more training at Brooke Army Medical Center. He was then stationed at Fort Knox for about 14 months, but then decided to re-enlist, and went back to the Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas to become director of Imaging Services.

“It finally got to the point where I felt like I’d outgrown my role and there was nowhere to go unless I was going to do more Army activities. Which, at 40 years old, most people retire,” Sexton says.

So, he shifted gears, going into the Army Reserve. Now, he’s a transportation mobility warrant officer, tracking large movements for the Army.

“If a unit was deployed, like when a brigade or battalion deploys, I would be the person that puts the movement together, their timeline and how they’re going to get from point A to point B,” he explains.

“It’s my job to make the timeline from the port to the fight. That’s what I did in my last deployment. I tracked all the movements in and out of Kuwait, in and out of the Middle East.”

Back in U.S. soil at IU Health West

Sexton officially returned to IU Health West this October, resuming his role as director of Imaging. Within that role, he serves as the strategic leader for Radiology.

“We’re trying to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the imaging world, as well as what’s happening at West, melding the two together to look ahead down the road so that we can meet the needs of patients and doctors.”

West’s Imaging team is the only 24/7 Imaging department in the IU Health Indianapolis Suburban Region—IU Health North, Saxony, Tipton and West hospitals. This includes all forms of imaging, like CT, MRI, radiology and ultrasounds.

It’s one of the region’s busiest departments, Sexton says, with a large capacity of two MRI machines, and three CT units.

Whether he be abroad with the Army or back home in the hospital, Sexton has always been drawn to leadership and connects with his teams well.

“Some people might think, ‘He’s from the Army, he’s probably disciplinarian.’ I’m not at all, I’m very collaborative,” Sexton says. “I don’t think disciplinarian works in every circumstance. It works in the military, because when you’re in a fight or any stressful situation, you have to be direct. That’s not really me in real life. I’m very much more inclusive.”

Sexton is also a bit playfully competitive with other departments in the hospital and he’s always looking for ways to encourage and improve his department. His natural curiosity also plays into his leadership role.

“Leadership is different every day. You have your standard goals—you want to mentor people, change and lead the way,” Sexton says. “But every day is a new day, when you walk in, you have a new set of challenges. There’s always something that’s boiling in the background. That’s exciting to me.”

While Sexton had originally considered retiring from the military when he first joined the West team, that’s now on hold, as he still enjoyed his last deployment. He hopes to take on new roles in transportation, whether it be trucking or railroad.

“We’ll see what happens,” he says.

Now that he’s back, Sexton is getting reintegrated with his role and team, and working to build a better grasp on it.

Sexton thanks Terrie Byars, who served as interim director for the West Imaging team, and Sam Schultz, who supported the team as department manager.

“Our team is fantastic. They do a great job,” Sexton says. “Our culture is wonderful and that’s a credit to our leadership.”

He met a man who needed help beyond healthcare, Ray Rice extended Hoosier hospitality.

By TJ Banes, IU Health Senior Writer, tfender1@iuhealth.org

Ray Rice started his role with IU Health on August 28th – the day of his 26th birthday. A native of Chicago, it wasn’t his first introduction to Indiana.

Rice attended Indiana University Bloomington where he majored in community health. He was part of the Group Scholars Program, created as a way to increase college attendance among first-generation, and underrepresented students at IU. His focus was on human development and family studies and he was especially interested in health disparities.

His first job out of college was working as a human health educator as part of a COVID team.

“Since my first college class in health disparities I’ve always thought there was more I could do with health education and prevention of disparities,” said Rice. As a community health specialist with IU Health, Rice works with a team focused on community outreach and engagement. Special projects are targeted at areas of the city where there are the greatest needs for education, detection, and prevention. Some of those needs include blood pressure checks, cholesterol and diabetes screenings.

Rice plays an integral role in staffing those screenings at local barbershops – where African American men are the primary clients. In the United States, serious complications of heart disease are 23 percent higher among the African American population compared to the white population. In response to a growing need, IU Health offers free screenings at community barbershops.

Following one screening, Rice accompanied IU Health social worker, Danielle McClain, to a home visit. As part of The Indianapolis Health Equity, Access, outReach and Treatment (iHeart) program, community health workers offer free services to those in need. A focus is on blood pressure management and support, connecting people to community resources, and education and support.

As he talked to the client, Rice learned that the man was trying to rebuild his life after a series of unfortunate events. Rice learned that one of the man’s challenges was a two-hour commute to his job. He connected the man to IU Health’s Mosaic Center for Work, Life + Learning. The community-based program helps attract talent to the healthcare industry and also works to improve access to promising jobs throughout the state. After several contacts with the gentleman, Rice was able to connect him to resources to help him with his career path and eventual hiring.

“It’s those interactions that make our community health and outreach so important. Even if I have one conversation with one individual, it makes me believe in what I’m doing and how meaningful it is,” said Rice.

Outside of his job, Rice is part of the hip hop dances for the Indiana Fever and Pacers. He started hip hop as a student at IU and joined the African American Dance Company.

“That took my dance to a whole new level and bigger stages,” he said. One of those stages was in New York City performing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey is known for his affiliation with platforms nurturing Black artists and encouraging their African American self-expression through dance.

This week’s surprise compliment goes to Jean Burrell, an MRI technologist at IU Health North and IU Health Tipton. “Jean works in a very busy environment with multiple patients being prepped for their MRI, but she makes the patients feel as if her focus is wholly on them.”