Health Care Hall of Fame - 2023

An enduring commitment to those in need

When Sister Carol Keehan retired as president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States in 2019, political luminaries extolled her accomplishments, focusing specifically on her role in the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

“If there was one word that would describe Sister Carol in that [work], it was courage,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, in a video tribute. “She not only had courage, she enabled other people to have courage to do the right thing.”

At a Catholic Health Association event in 2015, President Barack Obama said Keehan’s endorsement of the ACA legislation was the linchpin of its success: “We would not have gotten the Affordable Care Act done if it weren’t for her.”

For her accomplishments in healthcare and her unwavering attention to vulnerable people, Keehan is being inducted into the Health Care Hall of Fame.

“Her undying commitment to people who are poor and marginalized is very significant to the success of her career,” said Sister Mary Haddad, current CHA president and CEO. “Her legacy is that she is determined to make things better for those individuals.”

When Keehan committed to the Daughters of Charity after graduating from nursing school, her only goal was to work in the emergency department.

“I expected that I would grow old as the sister who had been in the emergency room for 40 years and knew everybody and everything that was going on,” she said.

The Daughters of Charity had other ideas. Keehan was only 25 when she was assigned to help open and supervise the Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital and Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Center in Pensacola, Florida.

“We had an average daily census of 50 babies in intensive care,” Keehan said. “The difference that made in the lives of people—being able to have their babies receive the very latest in neonatal intensive care that not only saved their lives, but protected their brains and their ability to function—is sort of uncountable.”

Over the next three decades, she moved through leadership positions in Catholic hospitals in Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland, culminating in her 2005 appointment to lead CHA.

At that point, her influence reverberated throughout the healthcare industry. In 2009, the Catholic Health Association noted the Internal Revenue Service had substantially adopted elements of the framework CHA had developed, in conjunction with other organizations, for categorizing community benefit expenditures at nonprofit hospitals.

Michael Slubowski, president and CEO of Livonia, Michigan-based Trinity Health, saw Keehan’s negotiating prowess on display when they traveled to Rome in 2018 to meet with several department leaders of the Vatican. They approached St. Peter’s Basilica as Pope Francis was giving a weekly audience to an overwhelming crowd.

“We had to go through a huge security line and then through another gate that was guarded by the Swiss Guard,” Slubowski recalled. “Sister Carol somehow sweet-talked her way through the gate with the guards, which seemed impossible to me because they didn’t speak English.”

“It reminded me of many situations in which Sister Carol persevered and overcame barriers—she never took ‘no’ for an answer,” he added.

As president and CEO of CHA, Keehan traveled to Haiti shortly after the 2010 earthquake to see the devastated St. Francis de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

After she returned home, CHA raised more than $10 million in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services and others to rebuild the hospital.

Although officially retired, Keehan continues to work in healthcare. She recently completed an 18-month stint as chair of the Health Task Force of the Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission. She serves on eight boards and consults for hospitals in Israel and Lebanon operated by the Daughters of Charity.

Keehan also remains passionate about Americans who don’t have health insurance.

“You just think of how every day many families ... worry about taking their child to the emergency room because, if the doctor gives a slip for medication or for an X-ray or for physical therapy, it’s nothing but a slip of paper—they can’t afford to get it,” she said. “That kind of suffering is wrong.” 

Lola Butcher is a freelance writer based in Aveiro, Portugal.