HONOLULU – The Queen’s Health Systems (QHS) has announced the following appointments.
Linda Puu, MSN, has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) at QHS, as well as CNO for The Queen’s Medical Center (QMC) and Quality and Patient Safety.
Puu, who had been serving as interim CNO, will continue her work to meet the system’s goals and objectives as they relate to nursing, overseeing the practice of nursing across the clinical settings to include QMC, QMC – West O‘ahu, Queen’s North Hawai‘i Community Hospital, Molokai General Hospital, and ambulatory/outpatient clinics. She will lead transformational efforts for the future of nursing to include growing the next generation of nurses. Puu will continue to work with the Quality and Patient Safety Department to improve patient outcomes, reduce risks, eliminate errors, implement best practices, and monitor compliance in accordance with accreditation and regulatory services.
Puu has more than 35 years of experience as a nurse and nurse leader with a clinical background in critical care and telemetry. Prior to joining QHS, she served as Vice President of Quality, Safety and Care Experience at Kaiser Permanente Hawaiʻi. She has a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Phoenix, and completed the Harvard Business School Executive Leadership Program.
Heather Liana Ku‘ualoha Texeira Beyer, RN, BSN, has been promoted to Director of Patient Flow at QMC.
Beyer oversees the planning, coordination and implementation of services, programs and activities of Patient Flow, Bed Control and the Transfer Call Center. She is responsible for developing plans for length-of-stay reduction, as well as standards to optimize bed utilization and ensure appropriate assignments based on clinical need, capacity and staffing.
Beyer joined QMC in 2002 as a new graduate cardiac telemetry registered nurse (RN). She later served as an RN coordinator in the Cardiac Transfer Center, before accepting the Operations Manager position in Bed Control. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her team developed and operationalized the COVID Infoline, which received hundreds of calls from the community each day. She most recently served as Manager of Patient Flow, Bed Control, the Transfer Call Center, the Discharge Unit, and Admin Coordinators.
Martha Fontana-Kwon has been named Chief Security Officer at QHS.
Fontana-Kwon is responsible for ensuring the safety of patients, visitors and staff, and will work closely with various departments to develop best practices of protecting QHS hospitals and clinics from security risks. She will also oversee emergency management and preparedness, working with local agencies in response to community disasters.
Fontana-Kwon most recently served as Director of Safety and Guest Services at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, where she developed an in-house security program for all events at the center, and implemented safety tracking, training and management programs. Prior to that, she served as Director of Safety and Security at Mid-Pacific Institute, and as a detective in the Honolulu Police Department. She has a Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration from Chaminade University.
