“It’s about time,” is the first thing Mikki Brewster said when she learned that Rosetta Keeton is a 2012 Salute to Excellence in Health Care Awardee. Her sentiment is shared by many in the St, Louis health care arena.
Keeton is the ombudsman, community service and volunteer manager at St. Louis ConnectCare, an urgent and specialty care facility in St. Louis. She is also known as a woman who will “tell it like it is,” even if it raises a few eyebrows among her audience.
“Rosetta is an individual for whom the word advocate truly applies. In all the years that I have known her she’s not been shy about raising issues when it comes to people and access to health care,” said Brewster, who is a St. Louis ConnectCare community advisory board committee member and former chairwoman and board member for the Missouri Foundation for Health.
“She’s always on point because she doesn’t let people get away with glossed-over statements.”
For nearly 30 years, Keeton has been advocating on behalf of individual, group or systemic issues affecting poor and minority patients, starting with early health care jobs in the 1970s, when she took it upon herself to help patients understand their medical bills, even if it meant going to their houses on Saturdays.
“My job was to talk to these patients, get to know them, understand what their problems were and represent them, if they had issues that they couldn’t resolve or didn’t have anybody to talk about,” Keeton said.
“And we found there were a lot of instances where a lot of people intentionally or unintentionally violated patient rights. Some people were amenable to changing – some people weren’t. Some departments and some organizations were amenable, and some weren’t. So it was our job to help the patient.”
She said the nature of the job also made it a very lonely job.
“I didn’t make very friends at that time but I was always thought of as fair,” Keeton said.
At one of those early jobs, at the now demolished Truman Restorative Center on Arsenal in South St. Louis, Keeton said her mentor Jackie Jackson taught her that there are three sides to every story.
“Their side, my side and the truth, and the most important thing that we were able to get to was the truth,” Keeton said. “And so, that’s how I operated and that’s how I operate today.”
She is motivated by the fundamental decency and rights of every human being.
“They have a right to respectful and dignified care,” Keeton said. Dignified care included a good dose of cultural competency served up “Rosetta style” to health care practitioners, when needed. Years ago, Keeton said employees would call at work or at home to come to the hospital if they thought a patient was getting the run-around or worse yet – “the shaft.”
“You had to be able to see everything,” she said. “You had to be able to see what you were doing and how you were doing it and why you were doing it, and make sure that everybody came out of it where they belonged, as much as possible.”
As she said, some people are amenable to change and appreciate her vigilance.
“She is a compassionate, wise servant who is respected and valued in the organization because she continues to remind us of why we are all here,” said Gail Montgomery-Edwards, chief compliance officer at St. Louis ConnectCare. “She is just an enthusiastic and intense patient advocate.”
Part of the reason Keeton champions those who feel unable to champion themselves can be found in her own upbringing. She grew up in the projects in St. Louis, living with both of her parents – a hardworking father, a stay-at-home mother, and two sisters and two brothers. There may not have always been a lot of money to go around, but the Keeton household was always full of love.
“We had a good, loving, wonderful family, so we were rich – more rich than some of these people who have lots of money,” Keeton said. “We were poor economically and … statistically I should not have been able to get past high school, if I made it that far.”
Keeton beat the educational odds, earning a master’s degree in health administration from Webster University and a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary sciences from Saint Louis University.
“But whatever it was that I believe that my daddy and God put into us, we were able to achieve something, maybe a little bit more than some of my friends and neighbors were,” Keeton said. “But I am still one of those people.”
Whether it’s through serving on special interest committees and advisory boards designed to lower health risk factors and promote wellness or implementing health programs for the uninsured and underinsured, Keeton’s work is to make sure the often overlooked are an included voice in health care service and delivery.
“That’s the other thing that happens – while I am helping people, I always learn from people,” she said. “People teach me a lot of stuff on my road to help other people.”
Collaborations have included an abstinence-only education project for youth who learned visual arts, performing arts and music creation as an alternative to engaging in sexual activities; working with residents living in St. Louis zips codes at high risk for chronic diseases to increase health literacy and become active participants their own health care; and Keeton also enlisted members of the Board of Aldermen to make the case for public health care needs in North St. Louis.
Keeton is the founder and facilitator of Sistah Connection, one of the oldest local breast cancer support groups in the area. Brewster notes that Keeton’s support of women with breast cancer is encompassing in its approach.
“She would always have an annual program that focused on the totality of healing, so that instead of having education about doing breast exams and other screenings, she would always have a fashion show and a luncheon so that people could focus on the wholeness of the experience, and not just the fear of the experience,” Brewster said.
“Telling it like it is” as a patient advocate also means helping patients accept when the doctor is right and their actions have nothing to do with the patient’s skin color, cultural indifference or economic circumstances.
“It’s always trying to find the truth,” Keeton said. “That’s all I’ve done.”
