COLUMBUS, Ohio — The new President and CEO of Mount Carmel Hospital System is making history. Tauana McDonald is the first African American woman to be named president and CEO of a health system in central Ohio and the first to lead the Mount Carmel Health System.
"I've always been grateful for the work the sisters started here over 140 years ago," she said. "The work of carrying on that legacy means a lot to me. I'm overjoyed."
McDonald was most recently the Chief Operating Officer of Mount Carmel Grove City Hospital where her responsibilities included making sure the facility had everything necessary to care for patients, colleagues and the community there.
As President and CEO, she will lead the entire system which includes a staff of 11,000 and four hospitals, with a fifth, Mount Carmel Dublin, scheduled for a Spring 2025 opening.
McDonald is familiar to them with a track record of being a mission-minded leader who gets out of the office and in the field with Mount Carmel's community health and well-being programs.
"I've always been grateful for the work the sisters started here over 140 years ago and to carry on that legacy means a lot to me," she said.
It also means taking on some major issues in health care from having the workforce to care for patients.
"The worry is Columbus is growing and we're excited about that growth but we need to be sure we have enough to take care of the people who are here and coming," McDonald said.
McDonald says that it is not just a Mount Carmel issue as it is playing out nationwide along with concerns about technology and protecting patient privacy.
Like her new peers leading hospital systems nationwide, the business at hand is to take care of what's happening here at home. McDonald said that she was ready.
"My business background has taught me the focus needs to be on the patient and we also have to take care of. If there's no margin there's no mission," she said.