BusinessReport.com

After decades of building coalitions and promoting progressive healthcare reform as an essential part of Louisiana’s future, Coletta Barrett recently changed course and now advocates principles that governed the medical community in centuries past.

Growing up in Hammond, Barrett envisioned a career as a history teacher rather than a healthcare professional until she took the bus to New Orleans and visited Charity Hospital School of Nursing.

“You don’t know what will influence you at the time,” Barrett says wistfully, “but when you look back you can see things clearly. My grandfather died of a heart attack in 1965, when I was 12 and away at summer camp. I never got to say good-bye. I guess that’s what attracted me [to medicine].”

After graduating nursing school, Barrett specialized in cardiovascular nursing and donated time to the American Heart Association, becoming the organization’s first registered nurse to serve as chief volunteer officer and later a Gold Heart Award recipient.

“When I was diagnosed with cancer, my family and friends thought I might change my focus,” she says. “But [heart disease] is still the No. 1 risk burden. You do not hear of someone who suddenly died of cancer. You may not have long time to live [with cancer]; but it’s not the sudden killer cardiac arrest is.”

In 1976, Barrett moved to the Capital City and embarked on a 25-year career at Baton Rouge General Medical Center that culminated in her appointment to vice president of administration for the mid-city campus. However, a conversation with a friend who had survived the September 11 attacks ignited an urgency to improve the health of the greatest number of Louisianans in the shortest amount of time. “I had worked to change the health of a single person, family and community. Now, I wanted to change whole populations,” she recalls. “The best way to do that was healthcare policy.”

So began Barrett’s employment as a vice president of Louisiana Hospital Association in January 2002. With a Tulane University masters of health administration degree and broad-based clinical experience, she was well prepared to create policy and procedures for LHA’s member hospitals, manage its research and education foundation and oversee special projects involving emergency preparedness, managed care, trauma networks and patient safety.

She was less prepared for a chance meeting that would guide the next phase of her career. At a YMCA Encore Plus gathering, Barrett was seated next to the Franciscan Missionaries’ most mercurial member, Sister Linda Constantin. More than just developing a friendship, Barrett soon became Sister Linda’s cancer coach.

Several years after the disease claimed Sister Linda’s life, OLOL administrators considered candidates to succeed Sister Linda as vice president of mission integration; Barrett’s name emerged. In 2005, she became the first non-theologian in the hospital’s history charged with interpreting and advancing the mission established by its founders in 1923: to care for the people of Baton Rouge with compassion, understanding, respect and dignity.

“It’s like being a facilitator and a steward,” Barrett explains. “My mission is to take faith and put it in our work. The end result is the healing process. We find ways to infuse faith into operations. It’s being a cheerleader for the employees and a culture coach. It’s been phenomenal.”