Kim James 
Toni Cotton has been named the new chief nursing officer for Harris Health System’s Ambulatory Care Services, the number one and outpatient care arm of the protection-internet healthcare device offering extra than 2 million affected person visits yearly to citizens of Harris County thru its community health facilities, college-based clinics, homeless shelters, and forte facilities.
Cotton, MHA, RN, BSN, a long-time resident of Katy, commenced her new function in January. She has greater than 30 years of nursing experience and is tasked to lead the employer thru the transformation of its healthcare transport device. “I even have a private ardor to deliver healthcare services to the maximum vulnerable humans in our community, where they live and work,” she says. “I love humans and am excited to enroll in the Harris Health circle of relatives wherein I can live out my calling to serve sufferers and others thru nursing-leadership constructing excellence.”
Her leadership philosophy calls for being a servant leader with integrity. She desires to build on Harris Health’s values of commitment, collaboration, and dating constructing for the whole group. Cotton plans to guide by instance and nurture the next era of nurses and nursing leadership, even promoting a holistic patient-care method. She desires to address diabetes. One of her dreams is to preserve Harris Health’s successful efforts to assist patients in decreasing accelerated hemoglobin A1c ranges (3-month measures of patients’ sugar degrees usually above 5.6 percent) and awareness on patient self-care education tasks to assist them in manipulating nutrition, workout, and comply with-up care.
Cotton also will lead the carrier’s effort to obtain Pathway to Excellence, a nationally identified nursing designation and paintings with medical doctor companions from Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to increase specialty care at clinic/medical institution locations. Before becoming a member of Harris Health, Cotton served as chief nursing officer at West Houston Medical Center, a 302-affected person mattress facility in Houston. During her time as CNO, the sanatorium accomplished several countrywide recognitions, including Pathway to Excellence, bariatric middle of excellence, number one stroke certification, and the American Heart and Stroke Association’s Gold Mission Lifeline Award.
She acquired a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Houston Baptist University (HBU), a grasp’s degree in fitness management from the University of Phoenix, and is currently pursuing a nurse govt board certification and a doctorate in nursing exercise (DNP) in govt leadership from the American Nurse Credential Center. She serves as adjunct-facility professor for HBU’s nursing management class with the scientific website online schooling at Harris Health’s Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital.
“I’m devoted to the nursing profession and growing a secure, remarkable affected person care enjoy and an atmosphere of teamwork wherein humans can thrive and grow professionally,” she says. “I accept as true with I have a sacred duty to usually positioned sufferers first and important in all my management selections.” Cotton is a member of the American Organization of Nurse Executives and the American Nurses Association. She has three children and four grandchildren. When not working, she’s concerned in church sports, enjoys the outside, gardening (developing fruit and pecan bushes), and spending time together with her circle of relatives.
