Carol DeGrazia, RN, BSN, has been promoted to general manager of call centers for VITAS Innovative Hospice Care®.

For six years DeGrazia served as director of customer service for VITAS’ Midwest Admissions Call Center in Lombard, IL. She was previously an on-call/weekend nurse and team manager for Community Nursing Service Hospice of DuPage.

DeGrazia earned her nursing degree at Triton College in River Grove and a bachelor’s degree from Lewis University in Romeoville.

Earl C. Bird, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, recently announced his retirement after dedicating more than three decades to a career in health care.

Bird, who began his career at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, has served in his current role of president and CEO of the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council since 1985. He will step down from the post in June 2006 to allow time for appointment of a successor and transition of leadership.

"Earl's leadership over the years has helped advance many important initiatives impacting the Council, its member hospitals and our community," said Dean M. Harrison, chairman of the Council's Board of Directors and president and CEO of Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Under his leadership as president and CEO, the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council's membership increased 40 percent. He also spearheaded the development of numerous programs and services that benefit the health care community in this region. These include a hospital employee benefit program, which now provides health insurance for 110 hospitals; an unemployment insurance service, which represents 97 subscribers; and a group purchasing program for its members.

In 1997, the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council assumed administrative responsibility of the Illinois Poison Center, expanding access to the Center's critical services statewide. Today the Illinois Poison Center is considered one of the most innovative poison centers in the nation. Its 24-hour toll-free hotline handles more than 97,000 calls for poison treatment advice and information annually.

Bird also oversaw the expansion of the Council's role in disaster preparedness following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The Council now is considered a leader in helping hospitals prepare for disasters and bioterrorism attacks. The Council works closely with federal, state and local agencies and other health care organizations responsible for protecting the public health and safety of this region. Part of the Council's disaster preparedness effort includes securing more than $1 million in federal funding to provide preparedness training for member hospital employees.

Throughout his distinguished career, Bird has been involved in numerous organizations and efforts committed to improving health care in the nation's metropolitan regions. He served as chair of the Conference of Metropolitan Hospital Associations and chair of its Committee on Urban Health. He also was a member of the American Hospital Association's Governing Council for Metropolitan Hospitals.

Bird also represented the Council's member hospitals in supporting the building of the John H. Stroger Jr. Cook County hospital to help ensure a strong community commitment by providing health care services to those who cannot pay for their own health care needs.

A few years ago, as Denise Pozen’s father’s health deteriorated, he moved from independent living to assisted living to a nursing home. Each move would bring the same questions from the nursing and medical staff: "What’s his history?" "What medication is he taking?" "What did his last doctor say?"

While she and her siblings became good at telling his history, they always feared they were leaving something important out. After her father passed away, the process began to be repeated with her mother, but this time Pozen decided to do something about it.

"I thought that there has to be some sort of organizer we could take along to each doctor’s visit, and write notes on what the doctor tells us," she said. "I looked online and in stores, but found nothing. I felt if I need this, then others will need it as well."

That’s when she decided to create her own, and she put her 27 years of working in the "very process oriented" environment at McDonald’s Corp. to good use. The result is the So Tell Me…^TM medical organizer, a journal-based system that helps individuals and caregivers keep track of future and past doctor appointments, prescriptions, treatments, tests and more.

Pozen’s story of caring for her parents is common for the "sandwich generation," the term for adults caught between the dual demands of raising children and caring for aging parents. She said that to ease one person’s burden, she and her siblings would take turns taking their mother to her doctor’s appointments. While this eased one kind of stress, it created another.

"My mother suffers from some short-term memory loss, and, when one doctor would ask what the other doctor had said, unless the same person had taken her to that appointment, we would have to rely on her memory," Pozen said. "Now we can write it down. At the end of the visit, as the doctor is writing on his or her chart, I’m writing on mine."

The So Tell Me…^TM medical organizer is an 81/2" x11", three-ring binder that can be used as is or can be customized by the individual. It is organized in a question-and-answer format that Pozen refined with the help of suggestions from a surgeon, a geriatric physician, an emergency room physician, and a number of "testers," people who have dealt with a variety of medical situations of their own.

"I wanted to make something that was basic enough to meet everyone’s needs, yet something people could add to or rearrange as the need arose," she said. "I’m always looking for ways to fine tune it."

The basic organizer costs $50 and is available through her Website, www.sotellmeorganizer.com. She began her marketing efforts by going to Senior Fairs, but found most seniors would balk at the price. She shifted from talking to seniors directly to talking to caregivers, and has seen "slow but steady" growth in sales. She gets the word out through e-commerce, print ads and attending various health fair. She feels the demand is growing for her organizer.

"Because we see more doctors and specialists than ever before," she writes on her Website, "our medical histories are like scattered pieces of a puzzle that are housed in numerous files in the individual offices of our many doctors. By combining these pieces, healthcare providers get a complete picture and can save precious time in recognizing symptoms and diagnosing conditions."

And for the folks, like her, in the sandwich generation, she offers a message that help is available. "This is one of those things that people don’t think about until they are in dire need," Pozen said. "But by being organized upfront, this system reduces stress."