First female Sparrow president begins work at health system

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Sparrow Hospital has a new president, and it’s a historic moment for the health system.

That’s because, for the first time in its 127-year history, Sparrow has a woman at the helm.

Dr. Margaret Dimond has held several other leadership roles in Michigan’s healthcare systems,
including being the president and CEO of McLaren Medical Group.

Dimond says as president of Sparrow, she plans to increase focus on mental health.

“We have such a mental health crisis with not a lot of state or private support in terms of moving those patients out of where they should not be treated. Today, our emergency department has over 25 long-stay psych patients. So if you’re an ER nurse and you went into emergency medicine, you don’t know how to properly take care of long-term psych patients,” she said.

Dr. Dimond also served as assistant dean for the MSU College of Human Medicine and was part of the founding team of the MSU Women’s Leadership Institute.