Thomas Kleinhanzl

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Thomas Kleinhanzl 

President, CEO
Frederick Health 

After the coronavirus began spreading, Thomas Kleinhanzl, who heads Frederick Health, became something of a local video star. 

As in-person meetings disappeared, Kleinhanzl took to recording weekly videos describing the virus’ challenges and dangers and his organization’s efforts to combat them. 

He has since cut back to twice-monthly videos, but over the past year he’s recorded more than 35. Those videos, he said, were shared throughout the community, “and helped us fulfill our goal to be trusted leader in our community for health information.” 

His organization’s biggest success, Kleinhanzl said, was how quickly it was able to pivot and address the pandemic’s challenges of an initial shortage of hospital beds, the retraining of staff, securing PPE and ventilators and more. Frederick Health set up a drive-through testing site that at its peak performed nearly 7,000 COVID-19 tests a week. 

“We’ve had to adapt to every phase of this challenge, and we’ve done so with great success,” he said. 

The pandemic has taught the country some lessons, Kleinhanzl said, including the need to manufacture and control the county’s supply chain and to invest in public health. 

While the first three months of the pandemic left Klenhanzl no time to unwind, he has since found a rhythm and learned to trust his incident commander and his team and taken to learning new songs on his guitar.  

“I even shared a few recordings during my weekly videos to encourage staff to find whatever they needed to reset their souls in the same way guitar does mine,” he said. 

This profile is part of The Daily Record's Power 30 Health Care list for 2021. Information used in this profile was sourced from the honoree. See the full list at thedailyrecord.com or in our digital edition.