Of all the milestones and achievements that Nancy Vorhees accomplished in her nearly 50 years in health care  in Spokane, creating the infrastructure to offer telemedicine to patients is her defining legacy and her greatest triumph. 

Known as the mother of telemedicine in the Inland Northwest, Vorhees laid the groundwork for telehealth during her time as the chief operations officer at Inland Northwest Health Services. She served in that role for 18 years before the organization merged with Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in 2016. 

Those who worked with her and were mentored by her say, though she is a natural leader, she was driven not by titles and notoriety, but by an inherent desire to help others. 

Sinéad Voorhees, director of graduate studies in business at Whitworth University and no relation, says of Nancy Vorhees, “She is very selfless in her accomplishments. It wasn’t coming from a business mindset but more of a very practical human need."

Nicole Stewart, who was the marketing and communications director for INHS, describes Nancy Vorhees as a mentor who had a tenacious spirit and a compassionate understanding of the needs of the rural community. 

“She could empathize and understood the need for access (to health care),” says Stewart, who is now the director of marketing at Providence Sacred Heart. “Even when she was met with barriers, she was very relentless, whether it was public policy or new initiatives. She knew how to involve others who shared the same vision.” 

For Vorhees, the effort to establish telemedicine technology in the region in the late 1990s was met with pushback and skepticism akin to artificial intelligence today. Yet she stayed determined in her vision of providing telemedicine to all, but most specifically to those in outlying rural communities who would benefit the most from the innovation. 

“You just know in your heart it’s the right thing to do,” Vorhees says. “You just keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing. And people get upset, and they get angry … but you just keep doing it.” 

It wasn't until COVID-19 hit four years after Vorhees retired from INHS, that she finally saw the fruits of her labor embraced and championed, she says.  

Sinéad Voorhees, who met Nancy Vorhees in 2018, says she had heard stories about Nancy's legacy as the mother of telemedicine, as well as stories about how she was mocked for trying to bring such a new concept to medicine.

“To hear how it wasn’t until after she retired that the telemedicine infrastructure that she put in place became the savior once COVID hit … just speaks to the work that we do no, we may not even see in the lifetime of our career,” Sinéad says.  

Nancy Vorhees was born and raised in the small farming community of Plevna in eastern Montana. She is the oldest of eight children in a Catholic household that emphasized the importance of work ethic and helping on the family farm. She always knew she wanted to be a nurse, and the idea was solidified further when she moved in with her grandparents in her junior year of high school to care for them after they suffered injuries in a car accident.   

In high school, she took math and science classes to prepare her to become a nurse and was voted “most likely to become the first woman president.” She graduated from Montana State University in 1971 with a bachelor’s in nursing and then promptly moved to Spokane to work at Providence Sacred Heart, where she had interned as a student nurse the year before. 

“They told me I could have any job there when I graduated,” Vorhees says. “So when I graduated I called them up and said, 'I’m here.'” 

Vorhees' internship at Sacred Heart would turn out to be the only job she would ever apply to. A natural leader with an inherent desire to help, she was constantly referred for roles and called upon to help lead projects and organizations. 

Soon after, she was promoted to assistant director of nursing at Sacred Heart. While the field of nursing was made up almost exclusively of women when Vorhees started her career, a woman in a leadership role or in a boardroom was a rare sight, she says. Moreover, women who did have a seat at the table generally were expected to sit quietly and not ask questions, Vorhees says. 

“But that’s not how I was,” she says. “I believed in supporting women and helping people understand that we play a huge role in this society, we always have.”

Kirsten Carlile, a mentee, and colleague of Vorhees for 15 years while they worked at INHS, says Vorhees was the type of leader who could see the potential in those around her and help guide them to where they could be. 

“She let me see the inside of a boardroom much earlier in my career than I should have,” says Carlile, who now is senior director of philanthropy at Redmond, Washington-based Child's Play. “It helped me see and understand business differently … she was always eager to take young leaders who had a trajectory in their careers of where they wanted to go and help facilitate growth for them.” 

Vorhees says that being a mentor and helping others grow in their careers is her marker of success. 

“That’s what it’s all about,” she says. “You have to have mentors; they’re going to help you get where you want to be. Nobody is successful on their own.” 

Vorhees left Sacred Heart in the late 1980s when she became a mom to three boys, Kev, and twins John and Michael. After the twins were born, she taught nursing for six years and earned a master’s degree from Gonzaga University. 

Vorhees then did consulting work for a few years until 1998 when she was hired as the chief operations officer at INHS. Though INHS was known for its work with electronic medical records in the early years of its formation, Vorhees' focus was telehealth and overseeing the Northwest Medstar program comprised of air and ground medical transportation services, and she created initiatives to improve emergency services.

“She was always looking for ways to make things better,” Carlile says. “That was her mantra: helping others and making things better.” 

Vorhees also helped change the IRS code, making it easier to purchase fixed-wing aircraft for critical care transport. The amended tax code, signed by state leaders and President Barack Obama, is framed and hangs in her home. 

“There was a statement in the IRS code that said you could not use bonds or anything like that to purchase fixed-wing aircraft … so we just got the tax code changed and inserted three words that allowed you to purchase fixed-wing aircraft for critical care transport.” 

After she helped merge INHS into Providence Sacred Heart, Vorhees became the interim executive director of the Spokane Teaching Health Center. She held that post for two years before retiring in 2018. 

While Vorhees had a strong work ethic, she was always a proponent of having a balanced life, caring for her friends and family, and traveling. A member of the Spokane International Airport board, Vorhees first began traveling the globe when she was 24 and took a six-week trip traversing the African continent. Over the years, she’s been to many countries, including Turkey, Mexico, and Israel. Recently, she became a member of the million-miler club through Alaska Airlines.