Small hospital, big heart: Greene County General thrives in era of corporate health care

The 25-bed critical care hospital on Lone Tree Road, and its staff, are rooted in the rural community. Reetz returned to Greene County in 2012 as the hospital’s operations officer, then got promoted to the top job after longtime hospital administrator Jonas Uland retired.

Two decades ago, Reetz was a White River Valley High School student mowing lawns in Linton and working as a volunteer, then as a paid nursing assistant, at the convalescent center in Lyons. The now-hospital CEO, WRV Class of ’97, is Greene County born and bred.

Reetz loved nursing, got a degree and worked at hospitals in Vincennes and in Bloomington before going on the road as a traveling nurse, landing jobs in North Carolina, Texas, California and finally Oregon, where she settled. Reetz got a bachelor’s degree there from Chamberlain School of Nursing and worked in Oregon as an emergency room nurse supervisor and also as an ER administrator for Providence Medical Group.

Then she returned home to Indiana. “I had wanted to come back, and it all fell into place.” She and her husband moved from the West Coast to the Midwest, their toddler son in tow. “We live right across the road from the farm where I grew up.”

Beneath that hospital CEO business suit lurks a nurse who knows patients are the priority. “When I hear ‘code blue in the ER,’ I’m there, just in case they need help. I can still clean a hospital bed, and I do. The nurse never goes away.”