Office of Advanced Practice

• Mission, Vision and Values
• Froedtert & MCW Office of Advanced Practice Leaders
• Demographics
• Engagement
• Annual Goals and Outcomes Summary

Mission, Vision and Values

• Vision
  To have an environment and culture where APPs thrive as respected and valued members of the health care team.
• Mission 
  To develop and retain a premier and inspired APP workforce that is empowered to excel in academic and clinical missions.
• Values 
   
  • Innovative
  • Collaboration
  • Excellence
  • Data-driven
  • Dedicated/Engaged
  • Equity
  • Connectivity/ System-ness
  • Curiosity
  • Patient-centered
  • Clinical quality and safety-minded

Froedtert & MCW Office of Advanced Practice Leaders

Jamie Silkey, PA-C, MBA, MHA
Chief Advanced Practice Officer
PA Silkey is the Froedtert & MCW inaugural chief advanced practice officer. In this role, she is accountable for APP workforce strategy and integration, workforce development and growth, scope of practice and professional standards and workforce management and care models.

Sarah Vanderlinden, DMSc, PA-C
Associate Chief Advanced Practice Officer for APP Practice and Privilege;
Director of APP Fellowship Programs within the Froedtert & MCW health network
As associate chief advanced practice officer for APP practice and privilege, Dr. Sarah Vanderlinden, DMSc, PA-C; leads initiatives in privileging and compliance and chairs the APP privilege and practice committee within medical staff governance. As APP fellowship director, she is accountable for fellowship operations and the APP professional and leadership yearly (APPLY) program. She practices in critical care and is an assistant professor in the Surgery Department.

Kevin Momber, MSN, CRNA
Associate Chief of Advanced Practice Anesthesia Providers
CRNA Momber is a nurse anesthetist who has practiced in the Froedtert & MCW health network since 2014. He currently serves as associate chief of advanced practice anesthesia providers, focusing on clinical excellence, workforce management and team development. His work centers on advancing patient care and fostering the growth of the anesthesia profession.

Jen Mahaffey, MPAS, MBA, PA-C
Director of Ambulatory Care for Advanced Practice Providers
PA Mahaffey practices clinically in obstetrics and gynecology. As director for ambulatory APPs, she drives initiatives that expand patient access, strengthen APP leadership and advance innovative care models to support patient access, safety and efficiency in outpatient services.

Rebecca (Becca) Krueger, MSN, ACNP, APNP
Director of Acute Care Advanced Practice Providers
NP Krueger is a nurse practitioner in Infectious Diseases. As the director of acute care APPs, she leads strategic initiatives to optimize APP roles, education and utilization across the acute care platform and oversees enterprise-wide programs including APP grand rounds and student placement. Her work advances APP practice alignment, professional development and system-wide priorities.

Pamela Souders, DNP, FNP
Assistant Director of Critical Care APPs
Dr. Souders, DNP, FNP, practices as a nurse practitioner in trauma and acute care surgery. In her role as assistant director, she established clinical education standards across critical care environments, supports universal APP onboarding within the ICUs and optimizes staffing and care team models. She is a triad leader in critical care operations at Froedtert Hospital.

Jessica Grusnick, PA-C, MPAS
Director of APP Education and Scholarship
PA Grusnick holds a newly created leader role within OAP. This role was established to further develop APP transition to practice programming and scholarly work. Her responsibilities include partnering with external APP programs to facilitate clinical rotations and student experience and serve as PI for the KERN grant focused on flourishing her role. PA Grusnick is accountable for APP educational programming, establishing clinical education standards across critical care environments, supporting universal APP onboarding within the ICUs and optimizing staffing and care team models. She is a triad leader in critical care operations at Froedtert Hospital and practices in obstetrics/gynecology.

Caitlin Schueller, DNP, APNP, FNP-BC APP 
Clinical Director of Primary Care 
Dr. Schueller, DNP, APNP, FNP-BC APP, leads the development of patient-centered, evidence-based primary care models that optimize APP practice and access. She partners with system leaders to advance workforce strategy, governance, education and operational alignment across primary care.

Demographics

The Froedtert & MCW health network employs more than 1,000 APPs, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 11.1% over the past five years. More than half of our APPs are earlycareer providers (two to 10 years in practice), with many newly hired APPS being recent graduates. Across the Froedtert & MCW health network, APPs make up approximately 50% of provider productive clinical effort. In FY25, APPs completed 45,000 discharge summaries; 350,000 inpatient progress notes; 120,000 inpatient consults and 280,000 ambulatory visits.

Engagement

In the 2025 Froedtert & MCW engagement survey, advanced practice provider engagement increased from 3.92 in 2024 to 3.98 in 2025. This score aligns with the 50th percentile in the national physician, academic medical center average benchmark. The survey participation rate was 46%. Key drivers of engagement for South Region APP focused on:

• This organization is in a position to really succeed over the next three years.
• This organization supports the growth and success of my practice.
• I am appropriately involved in decisions that affect my work
• There is effective teamwork across roles at this organization.
• The goals and priorities of providers are reflected by the actions of organizational leaders.
• My work makes a meaningful impact on me.

When reviewing the results by APP role, the CRNA cohort saw this biggest improvement over the last year with a 0.34 increase in score. South Region CNMs, NPs, and PAs also saw improvements in score from 2024 to 2025. Both the CAA and CNS populations saw small declines in scores over the last year.

Comment analysis for the entire cohort shows that culture/environment and compensation are the top themes for improvement. Comment themes around things that are going well for APPs includes culture/environment, patient experience, leadership and development. The area of culture/environment for both strengths and opportunities included topics of coworkers/teamwork, meaningful work, resilience and decompression, etc.

Annual Goals and Outcomes Summary

FY25 priorities focused on optimizing APP utilization, enhancing scope of practice, strengthening leadership accountability and improving patient access. Major accomplishments spanned workforce growth, expanded fellowships, operational efficiency improvements and governance enhancements.

Ambulatory
Critical Care
Acute Care
Anesthesia

Ambulatory

Specialty Care, Primary Care and Urgent Care 
This year was marked with tremendous growth in our ambulatory environment. The system saw record numbers of new patients in specialty care and primary care and adopted a new patient engagement center as well as additional locations. As patient access to care continues to be a central focus, APPs are posed to be a key stakeholder in improving access to care for our patients. Across the system, work has continued to remove operational barriers to capitalize on the clinical skill set of this workforce.

Specialty Care
Within the specialty practice, we focused on template optimization as well as converting non-encounter work to encounters to fully visualize the contributions and efforts of the APP workforce. This work will be foundational as we develop insights into true physician and APP capacity in the ambulatory environment and ultimately inform workforce planning projections.

We have been reimagining the way we provide care in clinics and an evolving digital world. By converting circular MyChart^® messaging threads into video visits with an APP, we achieved a 12% increase in video visits in addition to saving APPs time in the inbasket. We also piloted a new concept called Navigation Visits.

Navigation Visits
The Navigation Visit pilot was developed to address barriers in timely specialty care access, especially for high-complexity patients. By introducing APP-led navigation visits, the program aimed to improve patient access, streamline workups and enhance provider efficiency across ambulatory and inpatient care. Navigation visits were successfully piloted in three areas: General Surgery, Complex Gynecology and Urogynecology and Surgical Oncology. The goals of navigation visits are:

• Create a more direct, simplified path for patients to access care
• Improve new patient scheduling within a 10-day time frame
• Enhance provider satisfaction through a collaborative team model

The below data reflects the new patient average days to appointment and the percentage of new patients in 10 days.

Primary Care
Primary care focused on piloting a new methodology to attribute quality data to APPs within a shared panel. The new methodology allowed attribution of quality performance to the ordering provider rather than the listed primary care provider allowing the organization to recognize the strong quality contributions of our APPs in our care delivery. Primary care APP leaders have also focused on enhacing the onboarding experience by implementing a monthly education for newly hired APPs to spend time learning system resources, reviewing case studies, improving epic efficiency and networking with other providers.

Urgent Care
Given the growth of the urgent care APP workforce, Colleen Mrotek, APNP, was hired as the new APP manager. Under her leadership, urgent care development of a Sunshine Committee focused on acknowledgment, volunteerism and social gatherings; which have been identified as boosting morale and engagement.

Urgent care has also focused on the onboarding experience with implementing a new structured plan, which provides a progressive, phased approach to integrating APPs into clinical practice, gradually increasing patient complexity and volume across 36 shifts. The plan includes clear expectations for patient load, shadowing, chart reviews and real-time feedback, with designated milestones for evaluating performance and readiness to advance. It incorporates procedural oversight, educational tools and escalation pathways if benchmarks are not met. This ensures a safe, supportive and accountable onboarding process aligned with the urgent care standards. This work was done in conjunction with updating preceptor expectations and training, which emphasizes individualized daily planning, real-time feedback and guided independent learning for the newly hired APP team members.

Critical Care

The critical care platform redesign progressed with the launch of two key subcommittees involving APP team members: the quality and safety subcommittee and the practice subcommittee. These groups evaluated initiatives, were responsible for high-priority projects and routinely reported their progress to the leadership team. These critical care APPs were representative of critical focus areas across the health network, including IV management and utilization during supply shortages, CLABSI prevention and sepsis.

Ensuring strong connections between critical care APP leaders and the interdisciplinary teams was a primary objective. APPs were supported with resources, recognition and structured communication. A comprehensive stakeholder list was also developed to support collaboration, project coordination and alignment across the critical care service lines.

Acute Care

In summer 2025, the acute care provider dashboard was published in MyDA (an enterprise analytics solution application) in collaboration with Froedtert Hospital inpatient provider stakeholders and the Froedtert Health analytics team, developing workload and capacity metrics. The dashboard aims to use standardized data for tracking patient demand and provider capacity. This phase one included developing inpatient capacity and demand analytics at the provider and provider team level, removing barriers from current reporting that is structured at the unit level. The results help navigate staffing resource management strategies and care team models in the inpatient environment. Phase 2 will kick off in FY26 with the addition of shift data from Qgenda.

Launched acute care dashboard: 50% of discharge summaries included APP participation.

Anesthesia

All Froedtert Hospital employed certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) transitioned to the Medical College of Wisconsin employment platform on Jan. 1, 2025. This unified all advanced practice anesthesia providers into one group within the Department of Anesthesiology for the first time allowing for a more efficient deployment of anesthesia resources system-wide. To help manage the new larger, system-wide group of anesthesia APPs, the APP leadership organization was restructured, and 10 APPs were hired into clinical operations director, manager and lead roles. Additionally, a renewed recruitment campaign for certified anesthesiologist assistants (CAAs) and CRNAs resulted in hiring 25 additional anesthesia APPs in the first six months of 2025.

Student Placement
Kern Grant
Froedtert & MCW APP Fellowship

This year was marked by expanded APP fellowship with a new multispecialty hospitalist care program, gaining operational efficiencies with a centralized intake process for APP student placement and kicking off a grant study to look at drivers of flourishing in our APP workforce.

Student Placement

APP students are a main pipeline for our growing APP workforce. We deepen our relationships with local APP student programs by streamlining the student placement process. A centralized student intake was launched this year and led to decreased wait times for placement, decreased preceptor burden from multiple program communications and improve efficiency and transparency. We will continue to work with the Froedtert Thedacare Health organization development team and clinical departments to continue to evolve the process and ensure consistent service delivery and experience for our APP students.

2025 Top Five Departments/ Divisions Providing APP Students Clinical Education:

1. Primary care/Family medicine/ General internal medicine
2. Hospital medicine/ Perioperative medicine
3. OBGYN/Women’s Health Clinic
4. Cardiology
5. Ortho

This year the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network hosted over 600 APP students supervised by over 180 preceptors in clinical settings.

Kern Grant

Office of Advanced Practice was awarded a $400,000 grant to explore how the flourishing model of character, practical wisdom and caring are expressed in APP workforce and how it impacts APP development and well-being. This work will serve as foundational knowledge as we develop future transition to practice programming and career development pathways. This work will be led by Jessica Grusnick, PA-C, director of APP Education and Scholarship.

Kern Flourishing Model includes: 

• Focus on character development and practical wisdom
• Enhancing care through mechanisms that support APP practice
• Emphasis on APP satisfaction and engagement

The grant has two aims: 

• Aim 1: Assess for current team and individual level caring, practical wisdom and flourishing on APP-inclusive teams, within adult and pediatric orthopaedic departments.
• Aim 2: Create a framework for developing APP training and career ladders in adult and pediatric orthopaedics.

Froedtert & MCW APP Fellowship

APP Fellowship Leaders

Sarah Vanderlinden, DMSc, PA-C 
Director of APP Fellowship Programs, Froedtert & MCW health network 
As APP Fellowship Director, Dr. Sarah Vanderlinden, DMSc, is accountable for fellowship operations, fellowship growth strategy and the APPLY program. She practices in critical care and is an assistant professor in the Surgery Department.

Jennifer (Jen) McMahon, MSN, AGACNP-BC 
Associate Director, APP Fellowships 
NP McMahon is a palliative care nurse practitioner with the inpatient consult team within the Froedtert & MCW health network where she has practiced since 2012. As the associate director for APP fellowships, she focuses on recruitment, curriculum and program development to advance APP education and training.

Michelle Washburn 
Central and Critical Care Education Coordinator 
Michelle is the project and education coordinator for APP fellowships overseeing recruitment, curriculum and key education programs including APP Grand Rounds, Lunch and Learn, pharmacology and the APPLY program.

APP fellowship programs within the Froedtert & MCW health network are approaching their 10-year anniversary. These programs demonstrate outcomes in training and retaining APPs within the organization and creating a foundation for academic and career-long professional growth and engagement. The program executes multidisciplinary, collaborative and evidence-based management of complex patients through education, clinical and professional experiences and community.

The programs have clinical education collaborations in eight clinical departments, Children’s Wisconsin and Froedtert Community Hospital and ambulatory practice sites. There are more than 200 educators within the programs. The APP fellowship programs maintain a >50% retention rate of fellows staying with MCW post-graduation from their program and have a 100% job placement of fellows within one month of graduation.

The current programs include:

• Adult Critical Care (2016) – four fellows per year
• Orthopaedic Surgery (2019) – one fellow per year
• Psychiatry and Mental Health (2020) – four fellows per year
• Hematology and Oncology (2022) – one fellow per year
• Adult Multispecialty Hospitalist (launching March 2026) – four fellows per year

This past year, the program’s key wins and celebrations included:

• Approval of the APP Multispecialty Hospitalist Fellowship Program
• Creating a specific APP fellowship annual strategic plan
• Addition of a new program, Connections and Reflections, to promote fellow community and reflect on key aspects of fellowship progression
• Participation in a community engagement event with Elmbrook and Wauwatosa school districts’ high school students learning medical terminology and anatomy and physiology
• Enhancements to the fellowship program, including:
  • Fellow and program assessment improvements
  • Recruitment optimization in partnership with MCW human resources
  • Accreditation assessment and timeline creation

APP Fellowship Program Directors

column 1	column 2	column 3	column 4
Erika Basse, PA-C*  Associate Program Director, Orthopaedics	Andrea Bequest, MPAS,  PA-C Program Director, APP Multispecialty Hospitalist Fellowship	Kristine Broge- Reynen, APNP Program Director, Hematology Oncology	Jason Ipsarides, APNP*  Program Director, Psychiatry and Mental Health
Stephanie Ludke, PA-C  Program Director, Orthopaedics	Kaitlin Spiegelhoff, MPAS, PA-C  Program Director, APP Critical Care Fellowship	Maressa Sweeny, PA-C*  Associate Program Director, Hematology Oncology

*New leaders

Fellow Graduates

Fellowship Awards

Visit the Medical College of Wisconsin APP Fellowships Program site for more information.

New APP Multispecialty Hospitalist APP Fellowship Program 

The Multispecialty Hospitalist APP Fellowship Program was approved to start program development in 2025 with the first fellows to matriculate in March 2026. This program will build on the APP fellowship structure and focus on recruiting and training APPs to provide complex medical and surgical patient care in the 24/7 academic inpatient environment. The program has recruited key core rotations including hospitalist medicine, perioperative medicine, cardiology, hematology/oncology, acute care surgery and vascular surgery. The program is actively recruiting additional rotations to provide a robust clinical training experience. APPs continue to grow as essential acute care health care team members and are linked to key throughput, safety and quality outcomes. This program will emphasize providing an excellent patient experience from admission to discharge, focusing on highly specialized patient training, communication and collaboration with the health care team.

APP Leadership Development
APP Leader Redesign
Continuing Medical Education
Apply Program

APP Leadership Development

The APP lead and manager group, representing over 100 leaders including APP leads, managers, clinical directors and medical directors, meets monthly to connect local leadership with system-wide practice initiatives. In addition to these regular meetings, the group provides three dedicated development sessions each year, offering leadership resources, opportunities to strengthen connections with central leadership and access to Category 1 CME credits. 

The addition of new APP leader roles year over year.

APP Leader Redesign

The APP leads and managers redesign standardized a leadership framework to support the rapidly growing APP workforce. By creating clear job descriptions, defined accountabilities, structured onboarding and formal governance; the redesign ensures consistency and transparency across the system. This strengthens engagement, retention and performance of APPs while building leadership capacity aligned with organizational strategy and growth. Additional guiding principles, ratio of direct reports and FTE recommendations and implementation are planned for FY26.

Continuing Medical Education

Total number of Continuing Medical Education (CME) Credits Awarded 2024 Compared to 2025 

• 93% of participants responded that APP GR and lunch and learn sessions met their overall learning needs
• The top three areas where GR and lunch and learn CME improved the APP participants’ professional competence or ability:
  • 61% medical knowledge
  • 50% patient care competence
  • 47% systems-based practice knowledge

APP presenters participating in the 2024-2025 APP Education Series:

Thank you to our presenters.

APPLY Program — APP Professional and Leadership Yearly Development Program

Aim: To empower APPs to thrive as clinicians, professionals and leaders through a foundational, APP-focused professional development program that promotes excellence in patient care, professional growth and professional community.

Goals 

• Develop foundational professional and leadership knowledge, skills and confidence, including APP practice and role, communication, interpersonal skills and problem-solving.
• Support APPs in becoming resilient health care team members and leaders by integrating reflection, continuous learning and well-being strategies to support professional identity and development.
• Foster connections among APPs to share knowledge, build relationships and advance in their professional journeys as individuals and as professionals. 

There have been more than 80 APP graduates in four years.

2024 – 2025 Highlights 

New for this year, two APPLY sessions were added that highlighted APPs who apply skills learned from this program to deliver successful outcomes within the health network.

APPs who APPLY — Presents APPs who embrace everyday problem-solving and lead change. 

• Andrea Bequest, PA-C — Value of Structured APP Student Rotations
• Angela Halbach, APNP — Converting Triage Concerns to Telehealth Appointments
• Rebecca Krueger, APNP — Interprofessional and Patient-Centered Communication Pilot Project — Froedtert Hospital Acute Care

2024-2025 APPLY Program Graduates

Updates and Change
Outcomes and Impact
Privilege and Policy Updates
Privilege Updates

Medical staff governance plays a pivotal role in ensuring patient safety, quality outcomes and professional accountability. Traditionally, these structures have been designed to oversee physician practice, with limited integration of APPs. However, as the APP workforce expands and is impacted by evolving legislative updates nationwide, health systems face increasing pressure to modernize governance models to reflect evolving practice standards. At one large academic health system, APPs represent 41% of the medical staff and this workforce is growing at a rate of 11.1% annually. While formal APP leadership structures have been in place for over a decade, health care system expansion identified opportunities for APP privileging consistency, scope of practice optimization and engagement within medical staff governance. An APP Practice and Privilege Committee was established three years earlier but lacked alignment across the enterprise, limiting the ability to inform standards for APP practice and effective workflows. Recognizing the need for a more integrated approach, system leaders, including chief medical officers (CMO) and the chief advanced practice officer (CAPO), sponsored a redesign of the committee to connect hospital medical work units, improve privileging practices and establish clear pathways for APP voice and integration led by the associate chief advanced practice officer — practice and privilege and in partnership with the medical staff offices. This initiative is essential to evolving governance models supporting APP workforce scope of practice and improving patient access in complex health systems.

Updates and Change

APP Practice and Privilege Committee was redesigned to better align with system-wide governance, improve effectiveness and engage the APP workforce. The redesign was guided by several objectives:

1. Integrate APP governance across multiple hospital sites
2. Improve scope of practice assessment and optimization
3. Establish competency and privileging standards
4. Reduce administrative burdens through streamlined workflows and automation

A limited literature review revealed few best practices for APP integration into governance, underscoring the need for innovation. A current-state assessment and gap analysis informed priorities, including inconsistent privileging processes, variable integration across sites and the opportunity to improve early identification and recommendations to emerging opportunities. CMOs and the CAPO sponsored the redesign and drove implementation through updated committee policies, change management strategies and enterprise-wide alignment.

Outcomes and Impact

The initiative to redesign the APP Practice and Privilege Committee achieved several important outcomes, demonstrating measurable impact on governance, APP scope of practice and experience and effectiveness. Committee membership expanded to include 11 new representatives across various professions, specialties and practice locations. Formal reporting pathways were clarified, connecting five medical executive committees and the APP executive committee, and Magnet designees were incorporated from each site. A structured onboarding program was implemented to prepare members for committee and privileging review responsibilities. In the past year, the committee reviewed 125 new appointments, 357 reappointments and 253 specialty privilege requests; creating a consistent and efficient review process. A new pathway for requesting and approving APP privileges led to the addition of 25 privileges across specialties in the past 18 months, expanding access to care. Policy review efforts improved APP role clarity and eliminated nonregulatory requirements that created barriers, such as unnecessary co-signature mandates, directly improving APP efficiency and patient access. Competency-focused initiatives included an APP hiring guide, an enhanced focused professional practice evaluation template and improved privileging training and education standards. Process improvements incorporated automation, workflow alignment and system-wide consistency; resulting in reduced administrative burden. This led to an improved experience and effectiveness supporting patient care access and excellence.

APP Practice and Privilege Members

• Natalie Anderson, PA-C*
• Sarah Arnt, NP, CNS*
• Joe Beiler CNS*
• Laura Bushman NP
• Claire Dohmen, NP*
• Valerie Ehrlich PA-C
• Carolyn Hammen PA-C
• Jamie Kedinger, CAA*
• Rebecca Krueger NP
• Jennifer Mahaffey, PA-C
• Christina Megal, NP
• Kevin Momber, CRNA*
• Molly Robischon PA-C*
• Chris Repsa, CRNA*
• Pam Souders NP*
• Jennifer Trimboli, NP*
• Sarah Vanderlinden PA-C
• Anne Wick NP*
• Katie Zellner, PA-C
• CNM Pending

Privilege and Policy Updates

• Electronic Category II/III privilege request process — Added the ability to electronically submit all documentation for Category II/III privileges, reducing administrative burden for all stakeholders and improving accuracy.
  • Addition of APP managers to support competency assessment
  • Reduction of required signatures, focusing on competency assessment versus administrative burden
  • Electronic Category II/III privilege request
• Additional enhanced medical staff processes
  • Electronic notification and reminders for expiring medical staff requirements such as life certifications and OPPE
  • Created a standardized guideline to inform adding privileges when an APP has experience to improve patient access, provider experience and reduce administrative burdens
• An APP hiring guide was created to support hiring teams in meetings minimum standards for hiring APPs.
  • Informs best practice for hiring
  • Supports estimation of start dates
  • Anticipates barriers for privileging and improves collaboration to resolve them more quickly

Privilege Updates

25 new specialty privileges added in the past 18 months, including these examples: 

• Chest port insertion and removal for non-IR APPs — APPs are able to be primary surgeon in the OR; improves patient access
• Point of care ultrasound privileges
• Certified nurse midwife privileges updated
• Neonatal nurse practitioner privileges standardized in the South Region
• Expansion of ENT, urology and obstetrics privileges

Education enhancements to support privileging competency

• Negative pressure wound therapy
• Bronchoscopy

Key Policy Updates

• APP Practice and Privilege Committee policy — Clarified and updated
  • Membership to include APP representation, including South Region sites
  • The reporting structure of the committee within the South Region
• Advanced care directives
  • Supports APPs to discuss and authenticate community do-not-resuscitate (DNR) forms and bracelets for inpatient and ambulatory patients
• Informed consent
  • Clarified the role of APPs in informed consent; permits APPs to be a responsible provider
• Medical records contents
  • Removes additional documentation requirements for inpatient consults
• Orders policy
  • Permits APPs — Chemotherapy; removes CRNA co-signature requirements
• Donation after cardiac death
  • PAs added to the policy as an eligible provider to perform death pronouncement and performed the service. This added additional providers who are eligible and freed up attendings for other patient care services.
  • Collaborated with Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin to develop provider onboarding to support a consistent workflow.
• Do-not-resuscitate policy
  • Clarified and confirmed the ability of APPs to have DNR patient discussions, documentation and orders
• General language updates throughout
  • Updated the APP definition for policies
  • Clarified and accurately included APPs throughout documents

APPs Support Care Signature Program
APPs as Medical Directors at FMLH
APP Week
FY26 Goals Summary
Acknowledgments

APPs Support Care Signature Program

Care Signature launched in 2025 with a mission to digitize clinical care pathways into Epic using Agile MD to support clinical decision making and also standardize care delivery through evidence-based practices. APPs were identified as key clinicians to serve as clinical pathway consultants (CPC). The CPC is a key member of a leadership team aimed to define, codify and deploy clinical excellence to achieve the quintuple aim in health care through collaboration with clinical teams to develop content and workflows to support clinical delivery.

Megan Bellman, DMSc, PA-C; Jennifer Nogalski, APNP; and Maria Smith, PA-C have served in these inaugural roles, which deployed more than 20 clinical pathways in FY25.

APPs as Medical Directors at FMLH

Under the leadership of Libby Schroeder, MD, Froedtert Hospital underwent a restructure of the unit medical director roles. During this restructure, positions were open to physicians and APPs who were passionate about quality and safety in the acute care environment. The medical director role reports to the surgical, critical care or acute care senior medical director. In this role, the medical directors are dyad with nursing leaders to assess process improvement opportunities and implemented targeted safety and quality projects via a continuous improvement mindset. 

Two APPs were selected for these roles and will serve as partners for physicians and nursing leaders.

• Maria Wellenstein, ACNP, medical director, 11CFAC
• Annie Hanson, APNP, medical director, 12CFAC 

Workforce Health also added a medical director to support the growing program. 

• Kati Lammi, APP, APP Medical Director for Post Acute Care and FastCare^®

APP Week

Last year’s APP Week was a vibrant celebration of the incredible impact APPs have on patient care and health care innovation within the Froedtert & MCW health network. In conjunction with National APP Week Celebrations and a theme of Innovate, Elevate and Celebrate: The Power of APPs, the week was filled with events that recognized the dedication, expertise and forward-thinking contributions made by our APP community.

Highlights from the week included APP grand rounds on the history of APP practice research, wellness events including guided meditation, visits from therapy dog Moose and fitness boot camps and a charitable clothing donation drive supporting local foster and adoptive families. The celebration culminated with a hosted social event with food, drinks and networking.

Departments across the organization came together to honor APPs with appreciation lunches, leader rounding, intentional callouts of APP week at department meetings and messages of gratitude.

National APP Week featured wellness activities, professional development events and system-wide recognition of APP contributions.

APP Week 2025 will once again honor the contribution of our various APPs including physician associate (assistants), nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists, certified anesthesiologist assistants, clinical nurse specialists and certified nurse-midwives. Celebrations this year included therapy dog visits, yoga sessions, a wellness breakfast featuring chair massages and a social event with preceptor recognition. APP Week 2025 also hosted an APP grand rounds presentation featuring Andrea McKinnond, MMS, PA-C, and her presentation, “Building Bright Futures: Crafting Sustainable Careers Across Generations.” New features this year included a swag gift, digital Kudoboard, space decorating contest and leader coffee rounds. As part of our usual APP Week festivities, we continued to highlight APP stories and shared a celebratory APP Week video and department tool kit with ideas and resources to help local teams celebrate their APP.

We are excited to once again feature an APP Week celebratory video this year, which will be released during APP Week. To watch the 2024 APP Week video, click here.

In 2025, we will feature several new APP stories highlighting individual APP roles throughout Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Wisconsin. These new stories were published during APP Week 2025. Watch samples of APP Week stories published in 2024: Celebrating the APP community, shared APP stories or continuing to celebrate APPs.

APP Week Kudoboard

Froedtert ThedaCare Healthy System APP Appreciation Board Kudoboard | Kudoboard

For the upcoming fiscal year, we are excited to celebrate the professional and scholarly achievements of our APPs by streamlining the collection of awards, publications and other notable contributions for the annual report. Please submit your awards, publications and other professional accomplishments by scanning the QR code provided below, which will direct you to a centralized submission platform. To ensure comprehensive reporting and enhance recognition of APP contributions, we will implement a regular cadence of reminders to division administrators and leadership throughout the year. This approach will support timely submissions, accurate tracking, and a more complete celebration of the professional and scholarly work of our APP team in the next annual report.

FY26 Goals Summary

FY26 priorities will continue to support the practice and organizational goals of access, quality and financial stewardship. Work to look forward to includes implementing the findings from the APP leadership redesign work group, optimizing inpatient teams through discovery and implementing staffing standards in two pilot areas, continued expansion of APP fellowships that align with our workforce strategies and continued efforts in the ambulatory space to modernize care models in the digital age. These efforts set the stage for evolving our care models to meet patient expectations, increasing demand and optimizing our team performance.

Acknowledgements

We thank our advanced practice providers for their dedication, expertise and accomplishments in FY25. Your commitment advances the Froedtert & MCW mission and ensures exceptional patient care across our communities.

FY26 Newly Hired APPs

FY25 Newly Hired APPs