Michele Lerch

I am a mother, a sister, a friend and a nurse. I have cared for patients for many years. I worked at Gracedale when my children were toddlers and now they are grown with children of their own. I worked on Tower 5 and also as a nursing supervisor, responsible for employee schedules payroll and working with the AFSME Leadership and the union Contract. I was very proud of the care we took of the Residents and proud to work there. I have very found memories of that time in my life. I have a few years left till I retire and I would love to come full circle and work there again. 

I started my career working in the ICU. After my oldest child was born I started working at Gracedale because it was close to home and I discovered I enjoyed working with the elderly. Approximately 10 years later, I returned to acute care and the ICU. I became a manager of the Coronary ICU, Telemetry and built the Sleep Lab. I managed the Emergency Department at a local  inner city hospital, the also worked in acute care rehab and eventually became a Nursing Supervisor. I then started working at LVH in a new department called Patient Logistics and triaged the ICUs, assigned beds and managed incoming calls from other hospitals needing to transfer their patients to a tertiary care hospital. 
I accepted a position as a consultant and built centralized bed management and transfer centers for large healthcare systems all over the US and Canada to improve access to care. I was then offered a job as Corporate Director of Access for NewYork Presbyterian, which included responsibility for all beds at the Hospitals of Columbia  and Cornell in New York City, as well as functioning as a subject matter expert for the Physician Practices at Columbia and Cornell. I was a hospital administrator at Penn in Philadelphia but was only there for a year returned to Patient Logistics To be closer to home, Mom was dying and we transitioned her to hospice at home. 

My most relevant education was my RN Nursing degree at Northampton Community College. It has served me well. Eventually I got my Bachelors and Masters Degree, not in nursing, but in Health Care Administration.