Kristene Dentler Builds a Waypoint Between Medical Visits

For Kristene Dentler, BSN, RN, some of the most consequential parts of healthcare happen outside the examination room. A patient may leave a medical visit with new instructions, several medications, follow-up appointments, and questions that emerge only after returning home. Families may find themselves trying to connect information from multiple providers while also managing the practical demands of daily care.

After 20 years in nursing, Kristene has made that space between visits the focus of her next chapter. She founded Waypoint Health Advocacy, a private-pay concierge nursing practice in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, to help patients and families approach complex care with greater clarity and confidence. The practice reflects a conviction shaped by both her professional experience and her family’s healthcare journey: good care does not end when an appointment does.

Seeing care from multiple perspectives

Kristene began her career in acute care on a step-down telemetry unit at Sentara Health Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. She later moved into long-term care leadership and education at Riverside Health System, where her responsibilities exposed her to the importance of staff preparation, careful documentation, oversight, and coordination.

Her nursing path also included work as a registered nurse at Meritus Medical Center. She then spent seven years at WellSpan Health in case management, endoscopy, and interventional radiology before moving into home health. Together, these settings gave her experience with patients at different points in their care, from hospital-based treatment and procedures to discharge planning and support at home.

Across those roles, recurring needs came into view. Patients often had to understand new information while recovering, coordinate among physicians, or determine what to do next after a transition in care. Education and coordination were not secondary tasks; they were central to helping people move through the system.

When professional insight became personal

The idea behind Waypoint became more immediate as Kristene helped care for her mother and in-laws. Her family encountered multiple providers, hospital stays, medication reconciliation issues, and complex medical needs. Even with her nursing background, bringing the pieces together required sustained attention.

That experience showed her why families may need support beyond scheduled appointments. Medical information can arrive from different settings and at different times. A change made during a hospital stay may need to be understood alongside an existing medication list. Follow-up plans may involve several offices. Questions may arise when no clinician is in the room to answer them.

Kristene recognized an opportunity to apply her clinical and coordination experience directly to those gaps. She created Waypoint Health Advocacy to provide education, advocacy, care coordination, and navigation. Its intended clients include people who have recently been discharged, those working with multiple physicians, and families managing complex care needs.

Designing systems that support people

Alongside founding Waypoint, Kristene serves as Clinical Training & Quality Assurance Manager and electronic health record administrator at WeCare tlc. Her work includes training, quality assurance, and designing workflows intended to help care teams work more effectively.

That systems perspective complements her patient-facing experience. Training can influence how consistently processes are followed. Quality assurance can reveal where a workflow needs attention. Electronic health record administration can shape how information is entered, organized, and used by a care team. For Kristene, these responsibilities connect with the same fundamental concern that guides her advocacy work: whether people have the information and support needed to take the next step.

She is also pursuing a Master of Science in Nursing Informatics at Grand Canyon University, with completion expected in 2027. The program extends her interest in the relationship among nursing practice, information, technology, and workflow design.

A nursing career brought into focus

Waypoint Health Advocacy brings together threads that have run through Kristene’s career: patient education, care coordination, clinical training, quality assurance, and attention to how systems function in practice. It also turns a difficult family experience into a defined form of support for others.

Rather than treating navigation as an afterthought, Kristene is placing it at the center of her work. Waypoint represents her effort to stand with patients and families as they organize information, prepare questions, and understand the path ahead. After two decades across varied nursing environments, that is the impact she identifies as her proudest—and the direction she has chosen for what comes next.