Ministry Health Care Regional Chief Executive Officer Jeff Martin has announced that Kris McGarigle has been named President of Ministry Good Samaritan Health Center.

McGarigle said she is excited to take on a new leadership role with the hospital.

“We have great staff here and we have great leaders here and everybody is committed to the hospital,” she said, “and Ministry and Good Samaritan are committed to the community of Merrill.”

McGarigle has been at Ministry Good Samaritan in Merrill since 2006 as Vice President of Patient Care Services and in March was named interim President following the resignation of long time hospital leader Michael Hammer. In that role she has engaged the staff in advancing nursing care standards of practice, worked to improve quality outcomes, core measures, and patient satisfaction, implemented customer services initiatives, and worked with hospital leaders to improve wait times.

“We used to have fairly significant wait times in our emergency room and we heard a lot about that from the community. So we took a good long look at that and we took a considerable amount of time off our waiting time for the walk-in clinic,” she said. “We improved the quality and the customer service in the emergency department, and we’ve also done a lot with customer service up on our in-patient floor.”

McGarigle holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and an MBA from George Washington University. Prior to joining the staff at Good Samaritan Kris served as Director of Inpatient Services at Saint Michael’s Hospital in Stevens Point.

“During the past several months I have had the opportunity to work closely with Kris while she served as interim President and I am confident that she will be very successful as she takes on this role,” said Martin. “Her experience, leadership, and background make her the ideal person to fill this role.”

Ministry Good Samaritan Board President Mike Willman added, “Our board fully supports Kris in this role and we all look forward to working with her to help our hospital continue to meet the health care needs of Merrill and Lincoln County.”

McGarigle said there is a lot to be proud of at Ministry Good Samaritan.

“I think what I’m most proud about at Good Samaritan is that we genuinely care about our patients. We try to put them first,” she said. “What really impressed me is we’re a small hospital but we really hold ourselves to high standards when it comes to quality.”

In recent months, Ministry Good Samaritan has gotten a couple of new projects off the ground, including the hospitalist program and the new Ministry Medical Group clinic that occupies the 4th floor of the hospital. The anticipated growth of those additions will continue to be a focus in the near future, McGarigle noted.

“The Ministry Medical Group, which just opened this month, has been a significant investment of time and money and we see it growing in the future,” McGarigle said. “We have three physicians signed on to start at various times over the course of the next year.

“We also have a hospitalist program, an internal medicine physician who specializes in the care of hospitalized patients. Those are taking a lot of time and effort.”

A member of Ministry Health Care, Ministry Good Samaritan Health Center provides health care services to Merrill and the surrounding region and is sponsored by the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. It is a 25-bed critical access hospital that offers a range of primary and specialty care services. Ministry Medical Group’s Primary Care Clinic located on the Fourth Floor of the Hospital opened in August 2010 to better serve the health care needs of the community. The mission of Ministry Health Care is to further the healing ministry of Jesus by continually improving the health and well-being of all people, especially the poor.