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Digital Edition2026 Theo Award Winner: Aspirus Health
Aspirus Health is a rural health care system spanning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. The health system operates 18 hospitals and 130 outpatient locations with nearly 14,000 team members, including 1,300 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians.
The geography alone makes managing a system-wide safety culture a significant undertaking. The distance between a hospital in Calumet, Michigan, at the tip of the Upper Peninsula, and one in Stevens Point, a college town south of Wausau, is more than physical. The communities are different, the workforces are different, and the challenges they face differ each day.
Then came COVID-19.
For nearly three years, every resource, every priority, and every ounce of organizational energy was directed toward patient care and pandemic response. Non-COVID safety programs were paused in lieu of the overall safety of patients. The focus that had once been directed at employee well-being quietly shifted — a necessary task at the time — but the workforce felt it.
“All of our energy went towards our patients and fighting this pandemic,” said Elisha Doering, System Manager – Employee Health & Wellness, at Aspirus. “Safety measures that we would normally take went to the wayside. Over time, people began to feel like safety was less important, because we just needed to survive.”
By 2022, the toll was visible. Workers were exhausted. The culture of safety that had once thrived across the system eroded. And leadership recognized it was time to shift the lens back to the people doing life-saving work.
Rebuilding from the Ground Up
Craig Ogurek, System Director of Employee Health and Wellness, joined Aspirus in 2021 alongside colleague Megan Bell, System Injury Prevention Coordinator – Employee Health & Wellness — arriving at precisely the moment the organization needed a revamped investment in employee safety.
What they found was a workforce that had been through something profound and was, in Ogurek’s words, “looking for olive branches, looking for a lifeline.”
That vulnerability, while painful, created an opening.
“It gave us a really unique opportunity to provide that support, to make our people feel like they were uniquely being supported and cared for,” Ogurek said. “People were really willing to work with us. Leadership actually enhanced us being onsite instead of fighting it.”
The team’s approach was deliberate and personal. Rather than issuing top-down mandates, they went to the hospitals — all of them, regularly, making site visits nearly every quarter across a system that spans 48,000 square miles.
“It allowed the opportunity to build new relationships and trust within our system,” Bell said.
And they didn’t just meet with leadership; they sat with nurses and technicians and environmental services staff and asked what it was actually like to do their jobs. What felt unsafe? Where could they use the support most?
“We say, ‘You’re in our program — how do we fit to you?’ “ Ogurek explained. “We try to make it make sense for the site, not say ‘this is our program, fit into it.’”
Meeting Every Hospital Where It Was
The Mobility Coach Program became one of the program’s most powerful tools. Reimplemented and reinvigorated post-pandemic, it empowered patient-facing staff to serve as onsite champions for safe patient handling, reducing one of the most persistent injury drivers in any health care setting.
Targeted ergonomic assessments were conducted in high-risk areas: maintenance teams, EMS crews, flight crews, sonography departments. Onsite training with patient handling equipment was paired with a slips, trips, and falls campaign that combined virtual education with on-the-ground awareness efforts.
Two dedicated, full-time workers’ compensation case managers were added to the Employee Health team — a structural change that gave injured employees consistent, knowledgeable support throughout their recovery.
Communication was rebuilt from the inside out. System-wide emails went out, but the team didn’t stop there.
“It wasn’t a one-time communication and then we expected people to follow it,” Doering said. “We would specifically call out leaders and different business units and ask them how safety relates to them. [We] make it relative and specific to the actual people who are going to be affected. Because otherwise, it’s just a broad communication, and until it affects me, it doesn’t affect me.”
Not every site came around immediately. Some leaders were skeptical. Some facilities — protective of their autonomy, wary of corporate intrusion — required dedicated onsite work to build trust in the new-to-them safety approach.
“It wasn’t an overnight acceptance,” Ogurek said. “Some of our sites took meetings with staff, meetings with leadership, a real gaining of trust. It took a lot of persistence and dedication.”
But persistence paid off. Once leaders began to see results — fewer injuries, more confident employees, better claim outcomes — it gave way to advocacy.
Results That Reflect a Culture Transformed
Over the four years since the program’s reinvigoration began, Aspirus has achieved a substantial reduction in indemnity claim counts, a significant decrease in patient handling claims specifically, and a meaningful drop in overall injury counts — even as the organization’s payroll has grown by more than a third.
The numbers reflect something deeper than improved processes.
Every year, the team presents at the OSHA review meeting, sitting down with hospital presidents to walk through injury data. A few years ago, they began tying that data to employee engagement survey results, demonstrating the direct connection between safety outcomes and how employees feel about their workplace.
“Tying safety to how employees feel appreciated, how they feel safe in their work environment, that helped from the leaders’ perspective of why safety and wellbeing is so important,” Doering said.
For Ogurek, the measure of success that means most isn’t found in any claims report. He said, “We take our work very personally, and want our employees to enjoy their best life inside and outside of work.”
The team is already looking ahead and continuing to ask the simplest and most powerful question in their toolkit: what does the employee need?
“Sometimes it’s just really basic and very human,” Bell said. “That personal connection — what do your people really need? What are they telling you they need? Instead of trying to figure out what they need.”
It’s a philosophy that has earned the team a seat at the executive table — and the organizational trust to keep pushing forward.
“There’s a reason we won a Theo Award,” Ogurek said, “and it’s Megan and Elisha. Their level of commitment and dedication to our people and their craft is absolutely awesome.” &
The Theo Award celebrates its sophomore year, honoring 28 workers’ compensation programs for their excellence and service to workers across the nation. To learn more about the award and amazing qualities each winner possesses, visit here.
