From Staff Nurse to CEO
Kathy Parrinello, the first female president and CEO of Strong Memorial Hospital and Highland Hospital, is about to celebrate one year in the position
By Mike Costanza
Kathy Parrinello makes light of being the first woman in history to become the CEO and president of UR Medicine’s Strong Memorial Hospital and Highland Hospital.
“I think there many, many, many qualified women that could have been in this job,” she said. “It just so happens I’m the first.”
The promotion is just the latest step in a long career that has taken Parrinello from staff nurse to the upper echelons of hospital administration. On July 1, 2024, she became the head of Strong Memorial, a teaching hospital.
With nearly 900 beds and more than 13,000 employees, the hospital is the largest in the area. In September, Parrinello took on the same roles at Highland Hospital, which has more than 260 beds and almost 3,330 people on its roster.
Parrinello took the reins of Strong Memorial and Highland from Steve Goldstein, who was the hospitals’ president and CEO for nearly 30 years. But for a brief stint with a Chicago hospital in the late 1980s, she has spent all of her working life with UR Medicine.
Parrinello grew up in Elyria, Ohio, the second oldest of eight children in a family that valued the work ethic and taught the older siblings to care for the younger kids. She did well in high school, where she acted upon her love of the sciences and set her sights on a career in nursing.
“It allowed me to blend, kind of, my interest in the sciences, particularly anatomy and physiology, with the care provider role,” the 71-year-old said. “I think being one of the oldest in a large family probably contributed to that.”
After graduating from the University of Rochester School of Nursing in 1975, Parrinello became a staff nurse at Strong Memorial. After providing direct care to patients for five or six years, she was promoted to nurse manager.
“That was a combination of clinical work as well as leadership, because as the manager on an acute floor, you’re taking care of patients as well as leading the team,” Parrinello said.
She continued to advance in her career and in 1995 became Strong Memorial’s senior director of hospital operations. The new position allowed her to make greater use of her experiences and skills.
“The ability to solve problems at the organizational level and bring new initiatives to light or bring new initiatives to practice was much easier, given my background,” she said. “I think having a good sense of how health care is provided is very useful in hospital administration.”
While in that position, Parrinello helped develop a number of programs and was a driving force behind the construction of the new eight-story Golisano Children’s Hospital.
“We always had pediatric service,” she said. “When we knew we needed to expand beds, I was able to work with colleagues and say, ‘Why don’t we build a children’s tower instead of just expanding beds.’”
The Golisano Children’s Hospital, which opened its doors in 2015, currently boasts 124 beds, including the 68 in its neonatal intensive care unit. The facility treats about 85,000 patients each year.
When Strong needed more beds for cancer patients, Parrinello advocated for the construction of the 84-bed James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.
“I was able to work with our leaders in cancer and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had not only our outpatient cancer treatment but out inpatient cancer programs in one tower,’” Parrinello said.
The center, which is the flagship of the Wilmot Cancer Institute, offers patients and their families comprehensive impatient and outpatient services.
Parrinello was promoted in 2000 to chief operating officer of Strong Memorial, where she continued making her mark.
“It was a privilege to lead the development of community-based programs that brought state-of-the-art medical care closer to home, ensuring more patients could access the care they needed in a familiar and supportive environment,” she said.
When asked what challenges local hospitals face, she pointed to a decline in the number of local treatment beds due to hospital closures.
“Monroe County used to have seven hospitals and now it has four,” Parrinello said. “Over the years, due to financial duress or whatever, hospitals closed.”
The closures have left the Finger Lakes region with no more than 1.68 beds per 1,000 people. In contrast, New York state has 2.4 beds and the U.S. as a whole has 2.2 beds per 1,000. As a result, hospitals can be strained.
“You have COVID, you have a bad flu season and an aging population, all of a sudden all the hospitals in the region, the four hospitals remaining, we get more than 100% occupied,” Parrinello said.
Strong Memorial and Highland have taken a number of steps in recent years to respond to the scarcity of local hospital beds.
In June of 2023, Highland cut the ribbon on its Southeast Tower Project, a $70 million, 80,000 square foot modernization project. Patients are able to undergo several types of surgery in the addition and, if necessary, stay overnight in one of 58 new private rooms. Parrinello is leading an effort to put another 26 overnight recovery beds in the facility.
“Adding beds is going to be really, really important, I think, in this community,” Parrinello said.
Strong Memorial is seeking a way to treat more patients outside of its grounds.
“We’re exploring a hospital-at-home program where we actually admit a patient with all the technology in their home,” Parrinello said.
Using electronic devices, Strong Memorial’s staff could take care of the patients without always being present.
“We have Zoom and cameras and electronics and all sorts of ways to connect with people,” Parrinello said.
Treatment providers in a central hub would watch and monitor their patients and visit them periodically. Parrinello said the program is in its early stages and that the hospital hopes to launch it by the late summer.
Unique role
After acquiring her degree in nursing, Parrinello went on to obtain a Master of Science degree in medical surgical nursing from the University of Rochester School of Nursing and a Ph.D. in administration in higher education from the university’s Warner School of Education.
In addition to running two hospitals, she precepts students and lectures at the University of Rochester’s School of Nursing, Simon Business School and School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Though Parrinello doesn’t make too much of being the first woman to head Strong Memorial and Highland, she admits that the distinction carries responsibilities.
“Any time you’re in a unique role, you want to make sure that you represent whatever group that is well in the role, so there is an added dimension, I guess, in terms of really wanting to do the job well,” she said.