Honorable Mentions

More than 55 individuals and organizations across Kentucky and southern Indiana were represented in this year’s MediStar Award nominees and while only eight can be chosen as honorees, there were other people and organizations contributing wisdom, knowledge, talents and heart to the provision of excellence in healthcare. A few honorable mentions:

Monica Unseld, PhD
Greater Louisville Project and Data for Justice
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Monica Unseld’s advocacy efforts began in the environmental justice field, but expanded to multiple social justice issues, especially in light of recent events, including the pandemic and the death of Breonna Taylor. Unseld serves the underrepresented communities of Louisville, Kentucky. Through her work at GLP, she reaches out to communities their data often misses. This includes information on the immigrant, LGBTQIA+ and elderly communities, and those living with disabilities.

Robert Couch, MD (1956-2019)
Norton Audubon Hospital
President-Elect at time of passing, Kentucky Medical Association (2019)

Robert Couch, MD, will be remembered as a champion for healthcare, a passionate advocate for patients and a respected leader in the medical community. Couch had a unique combination of administrative, personal, professional and public-facing qualities that provided a package of outstanding leadership skills.  He put his MBA to work founding and running a practice of emergency physicians.  He was highly respected by his peers and others who knew him because of his easygoing, but informed manner.  

William Mills, MD 
BrightSpring Health Services
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Since the novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began in early 2020, William Mills, MD, served as chair of BrightSpring-PharMerica’s Outbreak Committee with a mission to mitigate the effects of the pandemic for 57,000 employees and the 350,000 patients/clients served daily.  To date, they have experienced an overall infection rate of one percent (one-third of the U.S. rate).

William Altman, JD
Louisville Department of Public Health and Wellness, Kindred Healthcare and Louisville Healthcare CEO Council

​William Altman, JD, led development and implementation of the City’s COVID testing plan, designed to ensure that adequate testing capacity exists in all geographic areas of Metro Louisville.  The city’s testing plan is a unique partnership between local hospital systems, community health centers, private labs, and the University of Louisville’s Co-Immunity Project.

Doctor of Physical Therapy Program, Bellarmine University
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The Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Program has imbedded into its professional curriculum, a service-learning thread dedicated to serving the community and providing high impact learning for future health professionals.  The Strive to Thrive program, one of seven service-learning sites supported by Bellarmine, aims to improve the assessment and delivery of healthcare for older adults through technological advances in a community-based setting. 

Smoketown Family Wellness Center
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Smoketown Family Wellness Center (SFWC) has a dream that every child will grow up healthy, living up to their potential regardless of the neighborhood where they live. SFWC represents a replicable model of healthcare delivery, changing the focus from disease management to maintaining wellness across the lifetime, moving care upstream to prevent diseases that fundamentally begin in childhood.

BrightSpring Health Services

​BrightSpring’s Connected Home model of care brings together the use of electronic health records (EHRs), analytics, medication management, remote monitoring, live telehealth, behavioral health services and care management to create and outcome-based environment centered around the client. The QuickBase tracking app was implemented to monitor employee temperatures and track employees, clients and patients who have tested positive and their quarantine period and test results.