Cone Health CEO stepping down due to ‘serious family health matter'
GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Cone Health President and Chief Executive Officer Mary Jo Cagle is stepping down from her role due to a 'serious family health matter', the company announced Wednesday. Her last day will be May 31.
Beginning on June 1, Cone Health's current interim chief operating officer, Bernard Sherry, will serve as interim CEO. Cone Health has initiated a nationwide search for the next CEO.
Cagle earned her undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Alabama. For 17 years, she was a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist affiliated with the Bon Secours Health System in Greenville, South Carolina.
'I was chair of the department of OB/GYN, eventually becoming chief of staff,' she said. 'And our chief medical officer had resigned to take a job elsewhere. And our CEO there asked me if I would stop in on an interim basis while they did a search.' That interim job would become permanent.
In Jan. 2011, she moved to Greensboro to become an executive vice president and chief quality officer for Cone Health. She'd eventually become chief medical officer, then chief operating officer.
In June 2021, in the heart of the pandemic, she became the first physician and the first female president and chief executive officer of Cone Health.
'I was hired to come in to give physicians a greater voice in leadership,' she told me. 'So this was an evolution that happened over time that a physician should be in this role. I (also) think the significance of a woman in this role says more about who works in healthcare at Cone Health. 84% of our employees are women.'
Cagle's accolades include recently being named one of Modern Healthcare's Leading Women of 2025, being named a Grassroots Champion by the American Hospital Association and being one of the 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives by Modern Healthcare. Under her leadership, Cone Health has been named by U.S. News & World Report as one of the top hospitals in 2024-2025 as well as a Best Regional Hospital for Equitable Access.
'It has been a joy and privilege to lead this system. I'm incredibly proud of all we've accomplished to increase access to care, enhance patient safety and care quality,' Cagle said. 'The future is bright as Cone Health leverages new approaches, capabilities and data to make proactive wellness care affordable and accessible for all.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
4 days ago
- Miami Herald
Dolphins receiver Waddle juggles the basics as he looks to bounce back in 2025
Jaylen Waddle was happy during the Miami Dolphins' Tuesday afternoon practice despite the dreary, rainy weather. In between plays, Waddle and former University of Alabama teammate Tua Tagovailoa were talking it up on the sidelines — laughing and chatting as the air horn blew, ending the day. During these practices during organized team activities, Waddle can often be found chatting it up with defenders, raising the stakes of practice. Few passes found their way in Waddle's direction on Tuesday, but he was a top standout performer in last week's practice the media attended. And he has mastered one of the challenges new position coach Robert Prince is laboring to teach, working with all the receivers on the art of juggling, which is aimed at improving their hand-eye coordination. 'I learned in two days!' Waddle bragged, pointing out he used TikTok as an instructional tool. 'RP [Robert Prince] challenged us to learn, [and] it's actually pretty fun. I'm trying to learn some new techniques.' He's also trying to refine his game, running better routes and becoming more consistent with his hands. After a disappointing 2024 season, where the 26-year-old averaged 49.6 yards per game and totaled 744 receiving yards, Waddle's gearing up for 2025 by 'smoothing out' his routes, with the goal of taking his game to another level. The Dolphins' offense had a shaky season in 2024, averaging 325.4 yards per game. That's a far cry from the 2023 season where Miami delivered the top-ranked offense. With his $85 million contract extension, which runs through 2028, the hope is that Waddle begins to step up and performs like he's one of the NFL's 15 highest-paid receivers. 'One thing that has been really cool to watch is his understanding of who he is on the team, how much we depend on his playmaking ability, but also how much we depend on how he is as a football player in extremely non-selfish ways,' coach Mike McDaniel said. 'I'm really excited about what 2025 has in store for him, based upon the excitement that he gives me every day attacking this craft.' In last week's OTA practices, Waddle had two catchers more than 30 yards and was easily a standout player from the practice. This week, on a short pass from Tagovailoa, he made a clean break through a crowded defense and pulled down a reception that was good for 20-plus yards. As fellow receiver Tyreek Hill's future on the team remains uncertain, due to his ongoing wrist injury, age, and a potential trade he initially requested and then backed off, this could be the year Waddle steps up as the number one receiver. 'I just go out there and do my job, man,' said Waddle, who missed three games because of a knee injury he sustained in early December. 'Whatever they ask me to do, I just go out there and do it, [and] try to do it at a high level.' In his first season with the Dolphins after becoming the sixth overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, Waddle showed promise with 63.4 yards per game and 1,015 receiving yards. He set a rookie record for receiving yards in that season. In 2022, he had his best season yet, balancing out the Dolphins offense with 1,356 receiving yards, averaging 79.8 per game. He also scored eight touchdowns. Now, the question remains if his first three seasons were flashes in a pan, and is his 2024 performance the new norm? Or can Waddle work his way back into a starring role for this Dolphins offense? '[Last season was] definitely not the year that we wanted as a team, definitely a year I didn't want as an individual,' Waddle said. 'But lucky for me, we get to go back [with the] same quarterback, same head coach, [offensive coordinator] and running back. Man, I think the foundation that we set here in OTA is going to really help us.'
Scientific American
27-05-2025
- Scientific American
Ministrokes Can Be Just as Dangerous for the Brain as Regular Strokes
Kristin Kramer woke up early on a Tuesday morning 10 years ago because one of her dogs needed to go out. Then, a couple of odd things happened. When she tried to call her other dog, 'I couldn't speak,' she said. As she walked downstairs to let them into the yard, 'I noticed that my right hand wasn't working.' But she went back to bed, 'which was totally stupid,' said Kramer, now 54, an office manager in Muncie, Indiana. 'It didn't register that something major was happening,' especially because, reawakening an hour later, 'I was perfectly fine.' On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. So she 'just kind of blew it off' and went to work. It's a common response to the neurological symptoms that signal a TIA, a transient ischemic attack or ministroke. At least 240,000 Americans experience one each year, with the incidence increasing sharply with age. Because the symptoms disappear quickly, usually within minutes, people don't seek immediate treatment, putting them at high risk for a bigger stroke. Kramer felt some arm tingling over the next couple of days and saw her doctor, who found nothing alarming on a CT scan. But then she started 'jumbling' her words and finally had a relative drive her to an emergency room. By then, she could not sign her name. After an MRI, she recalled, 'my doctor came in and said, 'You've had a small stroke.'' Did those early-morning aberrations constitute a TIA? Might a 911 call and an earlier start on anticlotting drugs have prevented her stroke? 'We don't know,' Kramer said. She's doing well now, but faced with such symptoms again, 'I would seek medical attention.' Now, a large epidemiological study by researchers at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the University of Cincinnati, published in JAMA Neurology, points to another reason to take TIAs seriously: Over five years, study participants' performance on cognitive tests after a TIA drops as steeply as it does among victims of a full-on stroke. 'If you have one stroke or one TIA, with no other event over time and no other change in your medical status, the rate of cognitive decline is the same,' said Victor Del Bene, a neuropsychologist and lead author of the study. An accompanying editorial by Eric Smith, a neurologist at the University of Calgary, was pointedly headlined 'Transient Ischemic Attack — Not So Transient After All!' The study showed that even if the symptoms resolve — typically within 15 minutes to an hour — TIAs set people on a different cognitive slope later in life, Smith said in an interview: 'a long-lasting change in people's cognitive ability, possibly leading to dementia.' The study, analyzing findings from data on more than 30,000 participants, followed three groups of adults age 45 or older with no history of stroke or TIA. 'It's been a hard group to study because you lack the baseline data of how they were functioning prior to the TIA or stroke,' Del Bene said. With this longitudinal study, however, researchers could separate those who went on to have a TIA from a group who went on to suffer a stroke and also from an asymptomatic control group. The team adjusted their findings for a host of demographic variables and health conditions. Immediately after a TIA, 'we don't see an abrupt change in cognition,' as measured by cognitive tests administered every other year, Del Bene said. The stroke group showed a steep decline, but the TIA and control group participants 'were more or less neck and neck.' Five years later, the picture was different. People who had experienced TIAs were cognitively better off than those who had suffered strokes. But both groups were experiencing cognitive decline, and at equally steep rates. After accounting for various possible causes, the researchers concluded that the cognitive drop reflected not demographic factors, chronic illnesses, or normal aging, but the TIA itself. 'It's not dementia,' Del Bene said of the decline after a TIA. 'It may not even be mild cognitive impairment. But it's an altered trajectory.' Of course, most older adults do have other illnesses and risk factors, like heart disease, diabetes, or smoking. 'These things together work synergistically to increase the risk for cognitive decline and dementia over time,' he said. The findings reinforce long-standing concerns that people experiencing TIAs don't respond quickly enough to the incident. 'These events are serious, acute, and dangerous,' said Claiborne Johnston, a neurologist and chief medical officer of Harbor Health in Austin, Texas. After a TIA, neurologists put the risk of a subsequent stroke within 90 days at 5% to 20%, with half that risk occurring in the first 48 hours. 'Feeling back to normal doesn't mean you can ignore this, or delay and discuss it with your primary care doctor at your next visit,' Johnston said. The symptoms should prompt a 911 call and an emergency room evaluation. How to recognize a TIA? Tracy Madsen, an epidemiologist and emergency medicine specialist at the University of Vermont, promotes the BE FAST acronym: balance loss, eyesight changes, facial drooping, arm weakness, speech problems. The 'T' is for time, as in don't waste any. 'We know a lot more about how to prevent a stroke, as long as people get to a hospital,' said Madsen, vice chair of an American Heart Association committee that, in 2023, revised recommendations for TIAs. The statement called for more comprehensive and aggressive testing and treatment, including imaging, risk assessment, anticlotting and other drugs, and counseling about lifestyle changes that reduce stroke risk. Unlike other urgent conditions, a TIA may not look dramatic or even be visible; patients themselves have to figure out how to respond. Karen Howze, 74, a retired lawyer and journalist in Reno, Nevada, didn't realize that she'd had several TIAs until after a doctor noticed weakness on her right side and ordered an MRI. Years later, she still notices some effect on 'my ability to recall words.' Perhaps 'transient ischemic attack' is too reassuring a label, Johnston and a co-author argued in a 2022 editorial in JAMA. They suggested that giving a TIA a scarier name, like 'minor ischemic stroke,' would more likely prompt a 911 call. The experts interviewed for this column all endorsed the idea of a name that includes the word 'stroke.' Changing medical practice is 'frustratingly slow,' Johnston acknowledged. But whatever the nomenclature, keeping BE FAST in mind could lead to more examples like Wanda Mercer, who shared her experience in a previous column. In 2018, she donated at the bloodmobile outside her office in Austin, where she was a systems administrator for the University of Texas, then walked two blocks to a restaurant for lunch. 'Waiting in line, I remember feeling a little lightheaded,' she said. 'I woke up on the floor.' Reviving, she assured the worried restaurant manager that she had merely fainted after giving blood. But the manager had already called an ambulance — this was smart move No. 1. The ER doctors ran tests, saw no problems, gave Mercer intravenous fluids, and discharged her. 'I began to tell my colleagues, 'Guess what happened to me at lunch!'' she recalled. But, she said, she had lost her words: 'I couldn't articulate what I wanted to say.' Smart move No. 2: Co-workers, suspecting a stroke, called the EMTs for the second time. 'I was reluctant to go,' Mercer said. 'But they were right.' This time, emergency room doctors diagnosed a minor stroke. Mercer has had no recurrences. She takes a statin and a baby aspirin daily and sees her primary care doctor annually. Otherwise, at 73, she has retired to an active life of travel, pickleball, running, weightlifting, and book groups. 'I'm very grateful,' she said, 'that I have a happy story to tell.'
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Yahoo
A Ministroke Can Have Major Consequences
Kristin Kramer woke up early on a Tuesday morning 10 years ago because one of her dogs needed to go out. Then, a couple of odd things happened. When she tried to call her other dog, 'I couldn't speak,' she said. As she walked downstairs to let them into the yard, 'I noticed that my right hand wasn't working.' But she went back to bed, 'which was totally stupid,' said Kramer, now 54, an office manager in Muncie, Indiana. 'It didn't register that something major was happening,' especially because, reawakening an hour later, 'I was perfectly fine.' So she 'just kind of blew it off' and went to work. It's a common response to the neurological symptoms that signal a TIA, a transient ischemic attack or ministroke. At least 240,000 Americans experience one each year, with the incidence increasing sharply with age. Because the symptoms disappear quickly, usually within minutes, people don't seek immediate treatment, putting them at high risk for a bigger stroke. Kramer felt some arm tingling over the next couple of days and saw her doctor, who found nothing alarming on a CT scan. But then she started 'jumbling' her words and finally had a relative drive her to an emergency room. By then, she could not sign her name. After an MRI, she recalled, 'my doctor came in and said, 'You've had a small stroke.'' Did those early-morning aberrations constitute a TIA? Might a 911 call and an earlier start on anticlotting drugs have prevented her stroke? 'We don't know,' Kramer said. She's doing well now, but faced with such symptoms again, 'I would seek medical attention.' Now, a large epidemiological study by researchers at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the University of Cincinnati, published in JAMA Neurology, points to another reason to take TIAs seriously: Over five years, study participants' performance on cognitive tests after a TIA drops as steeply as it does among victims of a full-on stroke. 'If you have one stroke or one TIA, with no other event over time and no other change in your medical status, the rate of cognitive decline is the same,' said Victor Del Bene, a neuropsychologist and lead author of the study. An accompanying editorial by Eric Smith, a neurologist at the University of Calgary, was pointedly headlined 'Transient Ischemic Attack — Not So Transient After All!' The study showed that even if the symptoms resolve — typically within 15 minutes to an hour — TIAs set people on a different cognitive slope later in life, Smith said in an interview: 'a long-lasting change in people's cognitive ability, possibly leading to dementia.' The study, analyzing findings from data on more than 30,000 participants, followed three groups of adults age 45 or older with no history of stroke or TIA. 'It's been a hard group to study because you lack the baseline data of how they were functioning prior to the TIA or stroke,' Del Bene said. With this longitudinal study, however, researchers could separate those who went on to have a TIA from a group who went on to suffer a stroke and also from an asymptomatic control group. The team adjusted their findings for a host of demographic variables and health conditions. Immediately after a TIA, 'we don't see an abrupt change in cognition,' as measured by cognitive tests administered every other year, Del Bene said. The stroke group showed a steep decline, but the TIA and control group participants 'were more or less neck and neck.' Five years later, the picture was different. People who had experienced TIAs were cognitively better off than those who had suffered strokes. But both groups were experiencing cognitive decline, and at equally steep rates. After accounting for various possible causes, the researchers concluded that the cognitive drop reflected not demographic factors, chronic illnesses, or normal aging, but the TIA itself. 'It's not dementia,' Del Bene said of the decline after a TIA. 'It may not even be mild cognitive impairment. But it's an altered trajectory.' Of course, most older adults do have other illnesses and risk factors, like heart disease, diabetes, or smoking. 'These things together work synergistically to increase the risk for cognitive decline and dementia over time,' he said. The findings reinforce long-standing concerns that people experiencing TIAs don't respond quickly enough to the incident. 'These events are serious, acute, and dangerous,' said Claiborne Johnston, a neurologist and chief medical officer of Harbor Health in Austin, Texas. After a TIA, neurologists put the risk of a subsequent stroke within 90 days at 5% to 20%, with half that risk occurring in the first 48 hours. 'Feeling back to normal doesn't mean you can ignore this, or delay and discuss it with your primary care doctor at your next visit,' Johnston said. The symptoms should prompt a 911 call and an emergency room evaluation. How to recognize a TIA? Tracy Madsen, an epidemiologist and emergency medicine specialist at the University of Vermont, promotes the BE FAST acronym: balance loss, eyesight changes, facial drooping, arm weakness, speech problems. The 'T' is for time, as in don't waste any. 'We know a lot more about how to prevent a stroke, as long as people get to a hospital,' said Madsen, vice chair of an American Heart Association committee that, in 2023, revised recommendations for TIAs. The statement called for more comprehensive and aggressive testing and treatment, including imaging, risk assessment, anticlotting and other drugs, and counseling about lifestyle changes that reduce stroke risk. Unlike other urgent conditions, a TIA may not look dramatic or even be visible; patients themselves have to figure out how to respond. Karen Howze, 74, a retired lawyer and journalist in Reno, Nevada, didn't realize that she'd had several TIAs until after a doctor noticed weakness on her right side and ordered an MRI. Years later, she still notices some effect on 'my ability to recall words.' Perhaps 'transient ischemic attack' is too reassuring a label, Johnston and a co-author argued in a 2022 editorial in JAMA. They suggested that giving a TIA a scarier name, like 'minor ischemic stroke,' would more likely prompt a 911 call. The experts interviewed for this column all endorsed the idea of a name that includes the word 'stroke.' Changing medical practice is 'frustratingly slow,' Johnston acknowledged. But whatever the nomenclature, keeping BE FAST in mind could lead to more examples like Wanda Mercer, who shared her experience in a previous column. In 2018, she donated at the bloodmobile outside her office in Austin, where she was a systems administrator for the University of Texas, then walked two blocks to a restaurant for lunch. 'Waiting in line, I remember feeling a little lightheaded,' she said. 'I woke up on the floor.' Reviving, she assured the worried restaurant manager that she had merely fainted after giving blood. But the manager had already called an ambulance — this was smart move No. 1. The ER doctors ran tests, saw no problems, gave Mercer intravenous fluids, and discharged her. 'I began to tell my colleagues, 'Guess what happened to me at lunch!'' she recalled. But, she said, she had lost her words: 'I couldn't articulate what I wanted to say.' Smart move No. 2: Co-workers, suspecting a stroke, called the EMTs for the second time. 'I was reluctant to go,' Mercer said. 'But they were right.' This time, emergency room doctors diagnosed a minor stroke. Mercer has had no recurrences. She takes a statin and a baby aspirin daily and sees her primary care doctor annually. Otherwise, at 73, she has retired to an active life of travel, pickleball, running, weightlifting, and book groups. 'I'm very grateful,' she said, 'that I have a happy story to tell.' KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing. This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. The post A Ministroke Can Have Major Consequences appeared first on Katie Couric Media.
