In My Life

DAP Health Chief Compliance Officer Dana O’Neal Erwin lives by Maya Angelou’s motto: Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Words by Kay Kudukis

DAP Health Chief Compliance Officer Dana O’Neal Erwin was born in Punta Gorda, Florida, and raised in Miami and Tallahassee alongside four sisters. Dad was a lobbyist. Mom was a housewife who’d gotten a full nursing scholarship at Tulane but who did not practice in the field post-graduation. Instead, she married and had children. “I always felt like she would have been happier had she had a career,” says Erwin. “I think that’s why I’m a career person.”

Five years older than Erwin, sister Donna was 15 when she turned to drugs, creating great stress for the family. Donna got pregnant and had a daughter, whom their parents adopted. That’s how Erwin came to have four sisters, but she wasn’t around for most of that. At 14, she was sent to a boarding school in Tennessee. That’s where she cleaned the school’s restrooms after classes, made brooms at a broom factory, sold on the floor at a department store, and rang up customers at McDonald’s. “I’ve just always worked,” she says with a smile.

She dreamed of being an attorney. “Girls aren’t lawyers,” claimed Dad. “You will be a nurse, like your mother.” Disappointing, but Erwin admits she did love dissecting stuff in biology. Two years were spent at Southern College in Collegedale, Tennessee. The rest at Walla Walla Community College and Walla Walla University in Washington state, where she married.

Neurosurgery, Nursing, and Night Shifts

After graduation, Erwin experienced being a nightshift neurosurgery nurse overwhelmed with tragic accidents. “It’s the most depressing job I’ve ever had in my life,” she laments. “We had an unusual number of new paraplegics and quadriplegics.” Some survivors begged for mortal release post-surgery. Dark stuff.

_­“I had no business being the lead nurse fresh out of school,” she continues, “but I was the only RN they had on nightshift on the unit. There were licensed practical nurses (now known as licensed vocational nurses) who worked on that floor for 18 years and knew everything about neurosurgery.” She loved the challenge, but the veterans weren’t thrilled to take orders from a kid just out of college.

After a year and half on that neurosurgery unit, Erwin transferred to the much cheerier labor and delivery department. “When one of the OB-GYNs had a terrible skiing accident and was unable to do surgeries, she became the chief quality officer,” Erwin explains. “That was when quality in health care was becoming ‘a thing.’ She recruited me to help her build the Quality program. So, I worked with her after my labor and delivery shifts.”

Erwin would call in patient reviews to the insurance companies, which led to her being offered a position with Kaiser-Group Health. “They were starting complex case management in their contracted network in Eastern Washington, and asked if I could come assist with a pilot program.” It ticked all of Erwin’s boxes. She accepted, spending a wonderful decade working with a high-functioning and loyal team of nurses.

During that time, Erwin and her husband had three children, then divorced after eight years. “We’re still very good friends,” she says. Not long after, pals set her up with a wheat farmer at a friend’s birthday party. That man had three children too, and they clicked. They married, Brady Bunch-ed it up on his farm for the next 20 years, the eight growing together as a family.

Degrees, Data, and DAP Health

By 2015, their nest was empty. The farm was sold, hubby started consulting in Denver and Canada, and Erwin craved a new challenge. Although she’d already furthered her education in health care administration and management, and had been consulting for years herself, she wanted a master’s. Not an overachiever at all, she obtained one in nursing leadership. Through that experience, she found out she excelled at statistics — using data to solve real-world problems, which comes in super handy in compliance and quality management. And no, she’s not a lawyer, but the compliance and risk piece scratches that itch.

Erwin spent five years at a federally qualified health center (FQHC) in Washington state. A friend from the Joint Commission kept calling with consulting opportunities, which led to her spending three years at a large hospital in Idaho, two years at a critical access hospital back in Washington state, and two years in Colorado as chief compliance officer for a national PACE program.

When Erwin was called to join Borrego Health, she politely sent regrets. But they were persistent, and in 2021, she finally acquiesced. She’d barely signed on as their CCO when DAP Health acquired them, offering her their CCO role. She was thrilled.

“I've never worked for an organization that has the mission and philanthropy we have here, and the support we get from the community and the state,” she says enthusiastically. “Thanks to our very active board and CEO, we have such a great reputation. It’s one of the most exciting places I’ve worked.”

Life is full of surprises, both cruel and kind. Sister Donna overdosed at 28, leaving her institutionalized until her death eight years ago. Dad suffered a massive heart attack that resulted in his death at 59. Remembering the past with her remaining sisters has been healing, and although she recently divorced Hubby #2, they, too, remain great chums.

Erwin believes everything that happens is an opportunity to rethink one’s values. “It’s all in how we look at the human race, despite color, gender, whatever,” she says. “We have patients down in Indio who are hardworking, but who don’t have running water or proper housing. Everyone has different challenges, but everyone can greatly benefit from the culture DAP Health has built.”

“In my life, I’ve loved them all.”

– Lennon & McCartney.