Supporting Nurses and Patients Across the
Patient Journey: What Does it Take to 
Innovate Post-COVID?

Tuesday, November 29th

4:30pm to 5:30pm EST

Betty Jo Rocchio, DNP, MS, RN, CRNA, CENP

SVP & Chief Nursing Officer at Mercy

Betty Jo Rocchio has served as Mercy’s senior vice president and chief nursing officer since October 2020.  Previously, she was the chief nursing optimization officer beginning in April 2018.  Betty Jo joined Mercy in August 2013 as vice president of perioperative services. Prior to joining Mercy, Betty Jo held several leadership positions in the Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus, Ohio.  These included chief nurse anesthetist, system director of surgical services, and vice president of nursing and chief nursing officer.  

Betty Jo has a passion and drive toward technology and analytics to assist nursing and clinical teams in patient care to drive optimal outcomes.  She understands that collaboration in the industry, often outside of healthcare, produces unrivaled impact. Clinical innovation produces results when applied to solving healthcare’s biggest problems.  In her tenure at Mercy, she has worked with a software company to co-develop an automated inventory management system to reduce nurse workload while adopting scanning technology to improve efficiency in an operating room.  She has also collaborated to achieve HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 7 status with development of a perioperative dashboard driving reduction in variation in the surgical patient with Epic data sets.  Betty Jo is currently working on a nursing workforce strategy that includes matching patient demand and a “GIG” nursing workforce with a modern-nurse focused company that has the platform to support efficient and effective deployment.

Karen Grimley PhD, RN

Chief Nursing Executive, Assistant Dean at UCLA Health

Dr. Grimley has served as the Chief Nursing Executive for UCLA Health & Assistant Dean for the UCLA School of Nursing since September 2015. In this role she is responsible and accountable for the overall delivery and management of nursing professional practice, education, professional development, research, administration and clinical services. Her aim is to reinforce healthy clinical practice environments that are person-centered, while also providing significant contributions to education and research. Dr. Grimley is a firm believer of incorporating the use of clinical and operational metrics to show nurses how their practice and delivery of safe, high quality care directly contributed to the operational success of the hospital. Previously, Dr. Grimley served as the Chief Nursing Officer at University of California, Irvine Medical Center. She has extensive experience in all aspects of nursing practice, inpatient nursing operations, programmatic oversight, and Relationship-Based Care.

Dr. Christy Dempsey, MBA, MSN, BSN, ADN, CNOR, FAAN, CENP

Mytonomy CNO Advisor

Dr. Christina (Christy) Dempsey is the former Chief Nursing Officer for Press Ganey Associates, LLC., responsible for providing clinical guidance to help clients transform the patient and caregiver experience. A registered nurse with over three decades of healthcare experience regularly speaking and publishing nationally and internationally on nursing, perioperative and emergency services, patient flow, medical practice operations, supply chain and physician/hospital collaboration. Dempsey has served as faculty for the Missouri State University Dept. of Nursing and holds a doctoral degree in nursing practice, master’s degrees in business and nursing and certifications in perioperative nursing and executive nursing practice. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and serves on the Board of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership. In 2018 and again in 2020, Dempsey was named one of the top 50 Safety Experts in the US by Becker’s Hospital Review.