We are honoring the continuous contributions, leadership, and commitment of female physicians in healthcare.
Meet Christine Rooney, MD – President & Chief Medical Officer at Kronos Health
Dr. Rooney has held leadership roles for nearly 20 years- her most recent being with Kronos Health, which has a Medicare partnership with On Belay.
Christine isn’t the first in her family to choose a career in healthcare- her mother was a nurse and a nursing instructor. When her mother was growing up, becoming a physician wasn’t one of the suggested careers for women, so the fact that it could be possible for Christine was inspiring. While completing her pre-medical course requirements, she worked part-time at UMass Medical School, envisioning herself there as a student. Before medical school, she worked in the research laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and spent time as a volunteer at the Emergency Department. Along the way, she discovered that she had a passion for learning about medicine and conversating with patients. In her current role, she helps interpret medical issues for patients, requiring personalized communication for each patient.
When Dr. Rooney started medical school, she didn’t know there was a specialty of Family Medicine. Once she understood that primary care focuses on the different medical needs of a person throughout their lifetime (prenatal care, pediatrics, adult medicine), she realized that this would be the perfect specialty for her. In Family Medicine, she could build long term relationships with multigenerational families and focus on health and disease prevention.
After taking the Family Medicine board exam in 1995, Christine volunteered at a small hospital in the Andes mountains of Ecuador. Previously, she had volunteered on a surgical mission in Peru. These trips showed her how intertwined social circumstances are with health.
When it comes tovalue-based care (VBC), she says it improves her ability to connect with patients in a variety of ways. Most importantly, it allows the connections to be meaningful and focused on quality, rather than productivity. This allows more proactive care rather than reactive care. In a Fee-For-Service model, care primarily occurs when a patient comes to the office.
In VBC, care coordination often happens between visits by a team of professionals. Working with a care team helps amplify the connections for patients with the practice and improve care. “It’s wonderful when a nurse care manager can visit a patient at home, check to ensure they have enough and the right kind of food and provide education about medical conditions.”
When asked if she had any advice for women that are looking to become a physician, she says “Being a physician is an amazing career. The challenges of being a woman in healthcare are not unlike those in other professions, with balancing life and work being a constant challenge. Ultimately being a physician involves being able to build relationships with patients in order to communicate well, diagnose, treat, and educate about medical conditions.”
On this day, we want to give a special thanks to the women in healthcare who continue to show-up and perform.
