Advocate Health

Someone who's helping shape the future of healthcare, innovation, and strategic growth.

Chet Brauer is the Division Director and Initiatives at Advocate Health, one of the nation's largest healthcare systems.

With more than 15 years of experience driving transformation across healthcare, Not multi-million, multi-billion dollar healthcare organizations, Chet has been in the forefront of some truly remarkable initiatives.

Since joining Advocate Health in 2020, he's helped lead strategic efforts, including a billion dollar investment initiative on the South side of Chicago, our hometown, delivering more than 160 million in operation improvements, helping develop Advocate Health's ambition, rewire 2030 strategy.

So his leadership spans healthcare innovation, strategic growth, operational excellence, and expanding access to care.

Now, before Advocate Health, Chuck held key leadership positions at Rush Medical Center.

He earned his MBA from the University of Chicago and was recognized by Becker's Healthcare as 2025 Rising Star Under 40.

So today we're going to explore what it takes to transform healthcare on a massive scale, how innovations moves from idea to implementation, and where's the greatest opportunities lie for the future of patient care.

And we've also now partnered with Atrium Health.

So we're putting a second campus of the medical school in Charlotte, and then we partnered again with Advocate Health.

So now...

We're a system of 60-some hospitals, almost 1,000 clinics.

So my health care career started in Chicago, actually, which is very different than Southern Illinois.

Started with Advocate Health and then moved over to Loyola Medicine, which is part of Trinity Health.

And then have the opportunity to come down here and really learn a whole lot about just the, you know, obviously there are similarities between just being in the health care system, but there's certainly some nuances to rural health care.

And we've got four hospitals in Southern Illinois with Deaconess Medical Center, Deaconess Illinois Medical Center in Marion, Illinois is our flagship hospital in the region.

She negotiated from there.

And, you know, I'm somebody that had the luxury of working for Advocate Health.

You know, it's the third largest nonprofit system in the country.

We had a ton of buying power.

And we were able to leverage that for clients.

better product services pricing on the things that we consumed in HR.

I recognize that not everybody that's listening to this podcast works for an organization the size of Advocate Health.

So they don't have the buying power.

Welcome to the Becker's Clinical Leadership Podcast.

I'm Mariah Taylor, assistant editor, and I'm thrilled to be speaking with Rhonda Hoyer, vice president of Advanced Practice, Wisconsin and Illinois Division at Advocate Health, and Brittany Broyhill, vice president of Advanced Practice, North Carolina and Georgia Division at Advocate Health.

Thank you both for joining me today.

I'm so excited to dive more into your strategic APP leadership.

It's, it's such a wonderful opportunity to be here, uh, with you.

Um, I'm Rhonda Hoyer.

Uh, I am by background, uh, a nurse practitioner and practiced in, uh, primary care for about 20 years, uh, and have been dually in leadership for the last, uh, 17 years, starting out in an academic medical center, uh, where I was responsible for growing and strategically leading the advanced practice workforce there and in the last five years came to Advocate Health prior to coming together, uh, as a much larger organization, uh, today and have had the wonderful opportunity to continue, uh, leading at, uh, the senior executive level.

Again, in a, in a larger workforce, we have over 2,700 APPs, uh, here in the Wisconsin and Illinois divisions, and so it's been a, an incredible opportunity, uh, to both, uh, be a clinician and lead clinicians in, uh, two very different organizations, but leverage the, uh, skills and, uh, and, and talents that are needed, um, in this space.

I'm Mackenzie Bean, Associate Vice President and Managing Editor of Becker's Hospital Review.

Today, I am very excited to be joined by Dr. Betty Jo Rocchio, who is Executive Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive of Advocate Health.

Betty Jo, thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

How are you doing?

It's a pleasure to be with you today.

Such a pleasure to have you.

I know you've been doing such transformational work with innovation and your broader nursing workforce at Advocate Health, so I'm excited to dive into some of that today.

But before we do, I was just hoping you could share one bit more about yourself, um, and your role for any listeners who might be new to hearing your expertise.