A nationally recognized expert on Medicare, Lyndean Lenhoff Brick was the founder and CEO of a health care consulting firm and served as the chair of the Illinois Hospital Licensing Board for more than 20 years.
“Lyndean’s health care clients absolutely loved her, not only because she was a master strategist who excelled at finding innovation solutions to many complex challenges facing health care, but also because she genuinely cared about them and their mission,” said former state Sen. Arthur “AJ” Wilhelmi, a onetime colleague of Brick’s who now is the president and CEO of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association.
Brick, 64, died of sarcoma on Feb. 27 while undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging test of her abdomen at a facility near her home, said her husband of 38 years, Myron. She had been a Frankfort resident since 2004.
Born Lyndean Lenhoff in Petoskey, Michigan, where her family had a vacation home, Brick grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, where her father ran the Youngstown Playhouse theater. She received a bachelor’s degree from Albion College in political science and journalism in 1981, and a law degree from Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law three years later.
Brick practiced law in Cook County and was married before moving with her husband to Germany while he pursued graduate studies. After returning to the Chicago area, Brick took a job in Joliet as a health care attorney.
In the early 1990s, Brick helped found Murer Consultants, a health care consulting firm then based in Mokena. Brick led strategic and long-term planning and emergency disaster preparation and recovery for health care providers. She also used her legal background to help hospitals and other health care providers with Medicare and Medicaid regulation and reimbursement, compliance, drug pricing and compliance with private standards.
“Lyndean became so valuable and was getting (job) offers in the 1990s to go to these hospital systems, because she was the one developing different product lines for the company,” said her husband, who oversees strategic communications for the firm. “So she was made a third partner and they gave her the right of first refusal on any sale.”
In 2017, Brick took over full ownership of the firm, and some months later she changed the firm’s name to Advis, which is a portmanteau of the words “advice” and “vision,” her husband said. Now based in Tinley Park, the firm has about 30 employees, Myron Brick said.
“Lyndean was an excellent adviser, thought leader and executive of a high-performance organization,” said John Orsini, chief financial officer of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. “What stands out was her thoughtfulness, kindness and intelligence but also through the lens of a high-performance organization, which takes balance. She was incredibly well-respected in the industry.”
Rob Monroe, Advis’ vice president and general counsel, said Brick was an “extremely charismatic person.”
“She was brilliant with her business acumen, and she had an uncanny ability to know when to leave people alone, to say, ‘I don’t have to be involved, you can handle this,’” Monroe said. “It took a lot of trust and a lot of good judgment, and it really made a difference with how she built the company on her own terms.”
In 2005, Brick was appointed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to serve on the Illinois Hospital Licensing Board. She later became the board’s chair, and she served for many years as chair before resigning from the board in January.
In addition to her husband, Brick is survived by two daughters, Sylvie and Harte; a son, Myron; a sister, Alyssa Lenhoff Briggs; and her mother, Nancy Lenhoff.
Services are private.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
