HAZARD, KY. – Linda Kelly has never thought much about retirement.

“Some people mark their calendars years in advance with, ‘This is the day I’m retiring,’” she said. “I never did that.”

The closest she came to really calling it a day was in March 2020, when the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 turned office workers into home office workers and flipped the global workforce on its side.

“I remember thinking, ‘If I get furloughed, I’ll just go ahead and retire,’” she recalled.

But Kelly, then serving as the ARH System Director of Risk Management and Compliance, was not furloughed.

“We had people on the front lines, and we had to figure out how to keep them safe,” she said. “We were learning to use personal protective equipment (PPE) and learning how to provide care through telehealth.

“The change was constant and the years since then have gone by rapidly.”

Kelly, who was named ARH Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer in 2021, is still busy, but, at 71, she said it’s time for a change.

“I have grandchildren who are still young, and I want to be able to spend time with them,” she said. “I want to make the decision to retire while I’m still in good health, rather than wait until I have to retire because I’m not.

“I want to enjoy my grandbabies.”

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Though brought up in a family of schoolteachers in Viper, Ky., Kelly said she was always drawn to healthcare.

“I had asthma as a child and spent a lot of time in the hospital,” she said of the now closed Mount Mary Hospital. “There were nuns at the hospital, and I was strongly influenced by them, and I just always felt like I needed to go into nursing so I could help people and try to make a difference.”

Nursing wasn’t yet an option at Hazard Community and Technical College, so Kelly enrolled in business studies. When she and her husband Bud moved to Tampa, Fla., for “family and adventure,” she completed an associate degree, working full-time during the day and taking classes at night.

Eight years later, when the couple moved home to Kentucky, Kelly took a job as secretary for the president of HCTC. And when the school finally began its nursing program, Kelly was a member of its first graduating class.

In 1984, she began her nursing career at Hazard ARH Regional Medical Center.

“I had no clue what I was getting into,” she said of those early days. “I just wanted to do decent work and maybe make a difference. I had no idea I was beginning a journey that would shape my life in ways I could not imagine.”

During her time as a bedside nurse, Kelly, who went on to receive both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing, worked in med surg, psychiatry, surgery, pediatrics, telemetry and oncology.

She then entered into hospital management, first as a nurse manager in pediatrics, then as house nurse supervisor interim CNO.

“I had the interim job for about 10 months when ARH started a case management program,” she said. “So, instead of going back to unit management or house supervisor, I decided to try my wings there.”

In 2001, that position, through which she learned about coordinating care and removing barriers to discharge, led her into risk management – a move that would define the second part of her healthcare career.

Kelly oversaw Hazard’s risk department for two years before she accepted the position as the ARH System Director of Risk Management.

“At the hospital level, it’s all things risk-related whether it be patients, employees or visitors,” she said, explaining the position’s responsibility is to identify, mitigate and prevent damage. “At the system level, it’s the same but on a much larger scale.”

Over the next two decades, Kelly led the system’s risk department and even served as co-compliance director for a time before assuming the role of ARH Director of Risk, Compliance and Privacy Officer.

Finally, in 2021, the departments were split in two as Kelly assumed the position of Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer.

In her position, Kelly has been tasked with ensuring that ARH is not involved in anything that can be perceived as fraud, waste or abuse.

“It’s ensuring we’re being good stewards of the federal resources we receive,” she explained. “It boils down to ensuring that we are doing the right thing for the right reason.”

Though Kelly’s roles in risk and compliance no longer afforded her opportunities to provide the bedside care that first attracted her to nursing, she said she believes they were just as important.

“It wasn’t hands-on care, but I felt like it made a difference on a larger scale for both the patients and for the entire organization,” she said. “Some might say I went from ‘saving lives’ to ‘saving the paperwork,’ but I like to think I was still protecting patients, just in a different way.”

Kelly, whose 41-year ARH career will officially end on Oct. 3, said she is teetering between excitement and apprehension.

“I’ve worked since I was a teenager at some job or another,” she said. “My life has been pretty structured so far, but I’m excited to begin a new chapter and to wake up each day and take on whatever adventure it brings.”

She said she has no real plans except to spend more time with Bud and their daughters Ashley and Kaitlyn, and grandchildren Sophie, 6, Phoebe, 3, and Miles, 2.

Beyond that, she said she’ll just see how it goes.

“If I spend some time and realize I’m bored, I’ll find something to do,” she said. “Maybe work at a part-time job or maybe I’ll volunteer.”

Whatever the future brings, she said she is grateful for her years with ARH, as well as for the friends she’s made.

“My time here was not just a job,” she said. “It’s cliché, but it’s family. It really is, and I am deeply grateful for every lesson, every laugh, every tear and every shared cup of coffee along the way.

“ARH has been more than a workplace,” she continued. “It has been a community, a family and a place where I have been proud to spend my career.”

Photo Cutlines:

Kelly, third from right, celebrates her retirement with her “work family,” Meghan Hall, Kristie Nolan, Ashley Creech, Makeshia Harvey and Cindy Smith.

Kelly, second from right, with her daughter Ashley, son-in-law Guy, granddaughters Sophie and Phoebe; daughter Kaitlyn, son-in-law Josh, grandson Miles and husband Bud.

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