Maggie Neustadt Brings Risk Management and Clinical Ethics Goals Together

Board Member Profile

Maggie Neustadt Brings Risk Management and Clinical Ethics Goals Together

The primary goal of risk management in healthcare, according to Maggie Neustadt, Vice President for Risk Management for the BJC Health System, is to be a creative problem solver. To find compromises to complicated medical/ethical/legal questions.

The primary goal of clinical ethics is to improve the quality of patient care by resolving ethical problems that arise in healthcare.

Those two goals come together in the Center’s long-standing relationship with Saint Luke’s Health System, which merged with BJC Health System in 2024, and Maggie’s service on the Center for Practical Bioethics Board of Directors since 2020.

Sharing Expertise

Maggie learned about the Center in the early 2000s, she says, “through her friend and legal colleague BK Christopher, whose mother, Myra Christopher, was the powerhouse and inspirational founder of the Center.”

“Once I joined Saint Luke’s in 2011 I had the opportunity to work directly with the Center on patient care issues,” she said. “As a risk manager, I’m often called with impossible questions. I remember thinking how fortunate we were to have ethics consultation expertise at our disposal to help lead to solutions that honored patients wishes and respected clinicians’ expertise.”

Maggie, in turn, has shared her expertise with the Center. Maggie is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Healthcare Risk Managers (ASHRM), faculty for ASHRM’s Risk Management Academy, and co-author of ASHRM’s quarterly Case Law Update.

“Through my connections with ASHRM,” she said, “I recognized the writing on the wall…that artificial intelligence would be ubiquitous and a game changer in healthcare. That it has potential benefits but also risk and patient safety implications. I also recognized that my peers in healthcare risk management would benefit from the Center’s expertise.”

 CPB Evangelist

“I consider myself an evangelist for the Center,” said Maggie.

Maggie and Dr. Lindsey Jarrett, Vice President for Ethical AI at the Center, presented together at ASHRM’s national conference in Boston in October 2022.

“The hallmarks of my philosophy in clinical risk management are transparency and fairness,” said Maggie. “Our presentation emphasized the need for thorough due diligence when adopting clinical and patient-facing AI.”

The Center offers services to help healthcare organizations design an infrastructure of accountability with standard processes to help make AI technologies safer and less susceptible to bias.

This April, Maggie and Dr. Ryan Pferdehirt, Vice President for Ethics Services and Flanigan Chair at the Center, presented a talk on how clinical ethics consultation brings value to hospitals at the American College of Healthcare Executives (ASHE) annual congress in Houston.

“What the Center does is so valuable,” said Maggie, I would like every healthcare system in the country to want a piece of it.”

She believes the Center’s biggest challenge will be to grow fast enough to keep up with need and demand for the work.

What does she wish other people knew about the Center?

“How to write checks to support this important work!” she said.

On the Farm

Maggie earned a Bachelor of Arts from Southern Nazarene University and her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

Lest one think she spends most of her time behind a desk, Maggie helps her husband, Brian Rotert, a mechanical engineer by trade, operate his family’s 1,600-acre farm in Appleton City, Missouri.

“Brian goes down to the farm Wednesdays through Fridays – when I go to BJC in St. Louis – and all week during planting season,” said Maggie. “When he needs help, I’m there in my overalls, driving dump trucks and filling grain bins.”

Maggie has two sons, Sam Nigro, a senior at Rockhurst High School, and Ben Nigro, a sophomore at St. Thomas Aquinas High School.

By Trudi Galblum