For 27 years, one name was virtually synonymous with Boston MedFlight: Dr. Suzanne Wedel, MedFlight’s medical director and CEO. Sadly, Wedel passed away on March 30, 2016, following a three-and-a-half-year battle with ovarian cancer.
Although Wedel left MedFlight in the hands of a capable leadership team that is committed to carrying out her vision, her loss has been felt deeply at the organization and throughout the greater Boston medical community.
“Whether you knew her for 20 minutes or 20 years, you knew she was a special person from the get-go,” said Maura Hughes, Boston MedFlight’s chief financial officer and interim CEO. “She was a terrific mentor and friend, and I’m going to miss her every day.”
Wedel was born in North Newton, Kansas, and attended the School of Medicine at Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. After also completing a residency in internal medicine there, she went to the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services in Baltimore, where she met her future husband, Dr. Alasdair Conn.
Conn became the founding executive director of Boston MedFlight in 1985. When, four years later, he left to become chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Wedel agreed to fill in as MedFlight’s interim CEO and medical director while the organization conducted a national search to fill the position.
It didn’t take long for Wedel and MedFlight’s board of trustees to realize that she had found her calling. Over the ensuing decades, Wedel was instrumental in growing the organization into a comprehensive critical care transport system that always put the patient first.
“That’s what we have now, a system based on her philosophy of how it should work,” said chief operations manager Charlie Blathras. “Not only was the goal high-quality patient care, it was and is and will always be safety.”
Wedel’s tireless commitment to Boston MedFlight didn’t stop after she was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer. “When there were days she couldn’t get into the office, she was on the phone with us constantly,” Hughes said. Among other things, Wedel had a keen eye for talent, and she helped ensure that MedFlight had the leadership team it needed to carry on without her.
Meanwhile, she also launched a fundraising initiative, XOXOut Cancer, to support the development of early diagnostic methods for ovarian cancer. As she explained in an interview with Boston Magazine, most women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed at late stages of the disease, because the symptoms aren’t obvious.
“It turns out that the technology to develop early screening tests is all there,” she told the magazine. “What isn’t there is how you put it together, because there’s just not a lot of funding for it.”
As Blathras pointed out, the fact that Wedel devoted so much energy to helping others and improving healthcare systems — even after her own terminal diagnosis — underscores what an exceptional caregiver she was, both personally and professionally.
“She genuinely cared about people and their needs,” he said.
“She was just a remarkable human being with an impeccable amount of integrity and grace.”
Sikorsky has now established a scholarship in honor of Dr. Suzanne Wedel through the MedEvac International Foundation.
