Common Spirit Health's Humankindness Award!
- Lt. Gutzwiller
- Oct 27
- 2 min read
“We were there dropping people off, looking at the sad faces of the doctors and nurses going, ‘We’re not a mental health center,'” FitzSimons said. “‘We’re a hospital. We fix broken bones and fix cuts and band aids, and we don’t know what to do with these people.’ Neither did we.”
Vanderschaaff said the hospital saw an influx of behavioral and mental health patients in 2016 that “somewhat” overwhelmed the emergency department.
“What we were finding is many of those individuals might not have actually needed emergency care,” Vanderschaaff said. “But we didn’t have a lot of other resources and choices for them within our community.”
FitzSimons said he researched funding opportunities and best practices for mental health crisis response teams, and community partners including CommonSpirit provided “important support” to get the program started. He credited the members of the SMART teams for doing “amazing” work.
Andrew Gaasch, CommonSpirit’s mountain region president, and FitzSimons cited a report that the SMART program diverted 87% of its clients from the emergency room in 2024. Vanderschaaff said SMART teams often address the needs of the patients where they are without needing to take them to the hospital.
“We don’t want those patients in that (emergency department) environment because that’s not the best place for them,” Vanderschaaff said. “(Emergency department) environments can be scary for anyone, so that’s not always the best place.”
Gaasch also mentioned the team’s work in creating plans to engage “high-risk” substance use disorder patients in their treatment and its coordination with other mental health entities in the county to create a “behavioral health crisis workflow” for local high school students.
“The SMART team’s dedication to meeting patients in a crisis, right where they’re at in that moment, is not just convenient,” Gaasch said. “It’s a vital health equity service that creates better care. It preserves human dignity when it’s needed the most.”
Gaasch said the regional community partner award presented to the SMART program is rooted in the values of “health justice” and “humankindness.”
Health justice is “more than just about equitable care” and is an “an organizational framework” aimed at achieving health equity and social justice, Gaasch said.
“(Humankindness is) not just a sign on the wall,” Gaasch said. “These are the acts of humanity and kindness that bring health justice to life.”
Vanderschaaff said Mary Skowron, St. Anthony Summit Hospital’s emergency department director, submitted the hospital’s nomination. The hospital did not select the SMART program as a winner itself, though. National-level CommonSpirit employees choose the winners across the system’s regions, Vanderschaaff said.
“There are a lot of individuals nominated for these awards — and this is the second year that we’re doing this — and only a select few are actually awarded,” Vanderschaff said.
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