Published: August 11, 2008 02:23 pm      

Home health director retiring after 29 years

An icon.

That is how Dr. Stuart Tobin, chair of the Madison County Board of Health, recently described Mary Lou Whitt.

The longtime nursing director of the Madison County Health Department-affiliated MEPCO Home Health Agency will be retiring at the end of August after 29 years of assisting patients in Madison, Estill and Powell counties.

“I’m leaving it with a clear heart and feeling very positive,” Whitt said. “I’m ready for my next chapter. I’m sure the staff here is going to do just great. I feel very comfortable. We have a very deep bench. We have a large amount of people who have had years of service in home health.”

MEPCO, which began in 1974, is a non-profit agency that provides an array of services, including skilled nursing care, personal care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and medical social work.

A registered nurse also is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The agency served 1,100 clients during the past fiscal year.

Jim Rousey, public health director for the Madison County Health Department, said the department has been “blessed” to have Whitt as the head of MEPCO.

“MEPCO, when Mary Lou started, had four people,” he said. “Now, MEPCO is the premiere dominant home health agency in the three counties with 80-some employees.”

“From the hour and minute that Mary Lou walks in the door every morning, she’s on the go... It’s work,” Rousey said.

Whitt, who began at MEPCO as a registered nurse in March 1979 before becoming director the next year, has changed the agency since the first day she was hired, said Mary Lou Muncy, former MEPCO director who retired last September as supervisor of the Berea office.

“I hired her,” Muncy said. “That was probably one of the better decisions I ever made.”

“She had a vision about where she wanted us to go,” she said. “She was willing to take risks that other home health agencies weren’t willing to do.”

While MEPCO still covered three counties when Whitt began, the agency only had one office, Muncy said.

At the time, the agency averaged 300 patients a year.

“She expanded it into four independent offices with nursing, clinical, therapy and aides,” Muncy said. “That’s still rare today. Many times you don’t have that presence in each county like MEPCO does. By doing that, it made us closer to our communities and able to observe our patients and their families more closely.”

“She created a work family,” Muncy said. “A lot of places don’t allow you to work like that. We’ve all been close. She expanded the staff and patient load.”

Janice Conrad, supervisor of the Richmond MEPCO office, has worked with Whitt for 18 years.

“She is probably the hardest working, most dedicated person that I have ever worked with,” Conrad said. “She’ll put in every ounce of energy and every hour it takes to get the job done. She’s been our biggest support and a mentor. She has a wealth of knowledge that can never be replaced.”

“She truly is awesome,” she said. “She has dedicated her life for the past 29 years to this place. She’s going to be missed tremendously by me personally and the agency.”

Billie Dyer, who has served as the supervisor for the Berea MEPCO office for the past two and-a-half years, will take over for Whitt.

“Billie, you’re going to have to not only get big shoes, but they’re going to have to have rollers on them to try to keep up with what she’s done,” Rousey said during Wednesday’s board of health meeting. “But, she’s leaving you with an agency that can’t get any better.”

Whitt was recognized in 2001 by the Kentucky Home Health Association with the Virginia Dodd Rice Award for High Achievement in Home Health.

However, of all of the agency’s accomplishments, Whitt said she is most proud of being the only health department-affiliated home care agency in the state to be accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).

“I think all of our offices offer such good quality care close to home and have a sincere interest in serving the needs of the patients,” she said. “We have not lost sight of that even in tough financial times or constraints of insurance. Our mission and vision is still very clear that we take care of the patients first.”

Whitt is not sure what the next chapter in her life will be yet.

But, with her youngest child becoming a high school senior, her oldest child finishing up college and her love for gardening, she is positive about one thing.

“I don’t think I’m going to be bored by any stretch of the imagination,” she said.

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.