Benedictine honors NKC Health CEO with Thompson Medal for integrity

Benedictine College brought two industries built on trust to Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza when it presented the Thompson Medal to Stephen L. Reintjes, Sr., M.D., the president and chief executive officer of NKC Health, and heard a keynote from Thomas M. Hoenig, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The invitation-only ceremony, held Wednesday, April 15, 2026, at Country Club Bank, now a division of FNBO, framed integrity as a practical standard for both medicine and banking.

Reintjes has led North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health since May 2020. Before that, he spent 30 years on the North Kansas City Hospital medical staff and seven years leading Meritas Health Neurosurgery. In remarks to students, he said health care accounts for 18% of the nation’s gross domestic product and warned that the United States is expected to be short 187,000 physicians over the next decade. He said Missouri is already short 2,000 physicians. Reintjes also praised Benedictine College leaders Stephen D. Minnis and Dcn. Kevin Tulipana, D.O., for moving ahead with a medical school in Atchison, saying it could help address the shortage.

Hoenig’s appearance carried special weight in Atchison. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from then-St. Benedict’s College in Atchison before spending 38 years with the Federal Reserve. He served as president of the Kansas City Fed from 1991 to 2011 and was the first president there to rise through the ranks. He also became known for challenging too-big-to-fail thinking and for dissenting votes on the Federal Open Market Committee in 2010, especially during the Great Recession and the banking crisis of 2008 and 2009.

The Thompson Medal comes from the Byron G. Thompson Center for Integrity in Finance and Economics, which Benedictine College created on July 22, 2018, and officially dedicated on Byron Thompson’s birthday. The center was designed to form ethical leaders in finance and economics, with plans that include banking-focused faculty, a banking minor, required ethics and Catholic social teaching, and lectures each fall and spring. Thompson, a 1955 economics graduate of St. Benedict’s College, served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and was the father of 11 children and grandfather of 47.

For Atchison County, the ceremony underscored a lesson that reaches beyond one award. Local hospitals, banks, schools and businesses all depend on the same thing: people whose judgment is matched by character. Benedictine used the medal to say that integrity is not a slogan for a plaque, but the foundation of public trust in northeast Kansas.