As Assistant Vice President for Managed Care at St. John’s Hospital/Episcopal Health Services, Inc. (EHS), Donna Skura is responsible for contracting with the entirety of the healthcare insurance industry, from Medicaid and Medicare to various commercial carriers. She also serves as Executive Director for Innovative Health Partners. Working with community-based healthcare providers, Donna says this encompasses “improving how we do business with them. We help make it easier for community physicians to refer their patients to St. John’s and we also support the providers administratively.”
Donna joined EHS six and a half years ago. With over 30 years of healthcare experience, primarily in managed care, she brings a strong networking background to the Advisory Committee for the St. John’s ICARE Foundation, which she’s been a member of since the Committee’s inception in 2022. The Foundation, established in 2021, benefits and supports the charitable and educational activities of EHS. As part of a subcommittee, Donna helps drive the philanthropic activities of the Foundation by seeking donors to support the Foundation’s mission and that of EHS.
St. John’s has struggled for many years, but over the last decade has experienced a remarkable turnaround in terms of its forward growth, physical expansion, and innovative programs. For Donna, the work she does with EHS translates to “fighting for the underdog.” This cheering on of the underdog has its origins in sports. Donna explains that when she and her dad watched games, especially college sports, “We always rooted for the underdogs, always believed they tried harder. So, I’m thoroughly committed to helping St. John’s and EHS improve healthcare outcomes and to ensure accessibility to quality healthcare services in all the Rockaway communities and the Five Towns. For the entire peninsula.” Donna elaborated that, “St. John’s is only an underdog in comparison to the mega healthcare systems that have more negotiating strength due to the size of their system and is in no way a slight to the level of quality care we provide throughout the Rockaways and surrounding communities. “
Donna is optimistic regarding EHS’s path forward and ICARE’s role in maintaining the organization’s commitment to quality healthcare access, such as procuring donations to support two of the hospital’s soon to open facilities, the Clinical Research Center, and the Ambulatory Pavilion, along with expansion of the cancer care program and affiliation with New York Cancer & Blood Specialists.
Believing the Foundation to be a “living, fluid, sustainable” entity, Donna says a longer-term goal is to work toward ensuring the Foundation’s viability so that it will be able to sustain itself and continue to live on after original members may no longer be involved.
The positive direction in which EHS is heading is encouraging to Donna, as is seeing the community taking notice of the beneficial changes occurring. Acknowledging the hospital’s limited budget for advertising, she hopes other formats and venues can be utilized to continually broadcast these advancements to the community and beyond.
Donna is a resident of Kings Park. She received her master’s degree in healthcare administration from C.W. Post/Long Island University (now known as LIU Post). Donna is a past president (2020-2021) of the Metro New York chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a national professional membership organization of healthcare finance management executives.
