Dave Wheelan - Cambridge Spy

The Spy “Exit Interview” series is part journalism and part oral history. Over the last eleven years, the Spy has interviewed dozen of local leaders at the moment of their retirement to reflect on their work and some of the challenges they have faced in their professional careers.

We continue with our chat with Patti Willis, Shore Regional Health senior’s long-serving vice president for communications.

For more than four decades, Patti has had a front-row seat in watching the rapid and sometimes controversial health care changes on her native Eastern Shore. In her Spy interview, she recounts the transition from independent community hospitals to one sizeable regional organization serving five counties.

Patti also shares what lessons she’s learned over this complicated process, as well as her observations about how these changes have sometimes been emotionally difficult for many who grew up or had been born in the hospital just down the road from them.

This video is approximately twelve minutes in length. For more information about work of Shore Regional Health please go here.

In the abstract, most people who are tracking coronavirus are aware that one of the side effects of the pandemic is the toll COVID is taking on the mental health in the country. With social distancing, mass unemployment, and a temporary halt to a certain way of life in America, levels of depression and anxiety were predictably going to go up.

But at the local level, it is hard for even the most perceptive of us to see the impact on those severe consequences in our communities where talking about one’s mental health is generally not a topic of the day.

We do however have some soft data that suggests that a mental health crisis is started to form. One shocking figure along those lines was the fact that For All Seasons, the region’s largest private mental health provider, has had over 250 new clients since Maryland’s stay-at-home order began in the middle of March.

One person seeing this challenge upfront and personal, is Beth Anne Langrell, Chief Executive Officer, for For All Seasons. In our Spy chat, Beth Anne provides in stark terms the state of the Mid-Shore’s mental health as well as the fragile nature of the agency’s budget to provide for this significant demand.

This video is approximately for five minutes in length. For more information or to make a donation to For All Seasons please go here.

Exit Interview: Patti Willis Looks Back at Healthcare’s Transition on the Mid-Shore

A Gathering Mid-Shore Mental Health Storm with Beth Anne Langrell

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