Hall of Fame 6.7.26 - Flipbook - Page 23
Hall of Fame | Sunday, June 7, 2026 23
CATHERINE
HAMEL
Catherine Hamel remembers the couple who slipped away.
She was 16, working her first job in a Philadelphia nursing home at a time when restraints were still used to keep residents in their beds at night. But a man and
a woman refused to be contained by policy. Night after night, they escaped their bonds and found each other, wandering into the library to sit and talk, sharing
what Hamel could only describe as a quiet, sustaining connection.
Supervisors urged her to be more forceful, to stop them. But Hamel sensed there was more at stake.
“If I did,” she would later reflect, “I would just
spend the rest of my life trying to prevent that experience for them.”
This early lesson shaped a career defined not simply by caring for people at the end of life, but by
honoring how they choose to live.
Today, Hamel is president of Gilchrist Cares, a
nonprofit healthcare organization serving more
than 26,000 patients. Gilchrist provides hospice,
palliative and serious-illness care, along with counseling and support services for patients and families facing end-of-life decisions.
Her leadership has seen the organization grow
from the Baltimore area to Southern, Central and
Western Maryland. In the past year, regional partnerships brought her philosophy of care to hospital networks in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The way she guided this growth earned her colleagues’ respect.
Gilchrist board member Stuart A. Smith III described her leadership as both strategic and collaborative.
“She is the consummate professional,” he said.
“She very carefully plans and executes towards the
plan.”
Smith praised Hamel’s productive working relationship with the board. “She asks good questions,
which I think is important. It’s just been a model of
how a board should work with a president.”
A self-described goal-setter, Hamel charted her
ambitions early. By age 30, she decided she wanted
to lead a hospice or managed care organization. It
took awhile to get there, but each step reinforced
her sense of purpose.
She found her footing as a long-term care ombudsman, advocating for vulnerable residents.
Later, she helped launch a home infusion therapy
company aiding patients and families in administering complex care at home. That experience, she
said, taught her about the discipline needed to account for the company’s performance. It was a les-
Catherine Hamel
Education: Bachelor’s degree from
Temple University, master’s in Management
of Aging Services from UMBC
Career highlights: Served as vice president
of Severn Healthcare Provider Services
and then VP of Infusion Operations
for NeighborCare before starting
at Gilchrist in 2008 and becoming
president in 2015. As president
of the Hospice Alliance in Maryland
and executive vice president for
GBMC HealthCare, she helped create
Alliance Kids, a statewide program
for children’s hospice services. She
serves on the board at Global Partners
in Care, where she advocates
for palliative and hospice care worldwide.
Previous board appointments include the
Horizon Foundation, Hospice and Palliative
Care Network of Maryland and Lifespan.
Civic and charitable activities: Governors
Committee on Serious Illness, Alzheimer’s
Association Memory Ball Committee
son in sustainability: Compassion alone cannot scale
without structure.
But the human side of the industry remained her
passion.
“I felt like care could be much better,” Hamel said.
“Just because you’re old, you’re not incapable of
making decisions that motivate you.”
That belief sits at the heart of hospice care, shifting focus from curing illness to ensuring comfort,
meaning and autonomy. For Hamel, it is not about
surrender, but about clarity.
“When you make a decision to die in hospice, you
know your care is going to be different,” she said.
“Our job is to keep you comfortable, but also to
know what’s important to you until you take your
last breath.”
Today, more Americans live longer, surviving
once-fatal illnesses that now require complex, extended care. Hamel sees opportunity, with medical advances giving people more time to consider
their preferences and communicate with loved
ones.
“Chronic disease, in a way, has given us a gift,”
she said. “I see people having more choice in the
way they die.”
Those conversations often come too late. Hamel
notes that a significant portion of patients receive
hospice care in their final days, despite being eligible for months of support. Closing that gap has become a priority, particularly for patients with dementia, who now represent a growing share of those
in need.
The discussion could begin earlier, she said, even
as early as applying for a driver’s license and choosing whether to become an organ donor.
“Having comfort to know what your loved one
really wants brings peace and joy,” she said. “Not
knowing can add conflict to what is already a stressful time.”
Through education initiatives and community
outreach, her organization works to normalize
these discussions, while also offering grief services
at no cost — extending care beyond the patient to
families and communities.
For Hamel, the work builds on her experience as
a teenager: that care is not about control, but connection.
Whether it is a couple finding each other in the
quiet of a nursing home library or a patient defining what matters most in their final days, the goal
is the same — to preserve the humanity at the center of every life.
In that space, she found not only her career, but
her calling.
— Karl Hille
