DEANNA HOWARD’S business card reads: “Vice President of Regional Development for Dartmouth-Hitchcock.” But it would be just as accurate to call the former music teacher a band leader: someone whose goal it is to keep the beat for a varied ensemble, help its members stay in synch, but allow them to contribute individual trills and flourishes.
Today, a whole suite of health-care organizations—from Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital (UCVH) near the Canadian border to institutions in southern New Hampshire and Vermont—make up Howard’s “band.” She builds relationships with hospitals, physician groups and home health agencies across the region, forging affiliations with other organizations committed to what she and her colleagues call “population health.” That is, not just caring for patients who walk through the door, but embracing responsibility for the health of a region’s entire population.
Cheryl Abbott, RN, left, and Kate McDermott, RN, conduct a balance test with patient.
Forging partnerships is not new for Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H). In fact, it is part of the organizational DNA. The institution has supplied specialists to the region’s rural reaches since the 1960s, and in the 1980s it established a consortium of a dozen health-care organizations called the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance, which now has transitioned to the New England Alliance for Health (NEAH) with 17 member organizations.
Deanna Howard, right, leads one of many meetings with D-H leaders and community partners.
New London joins the D-H Family Today, the number of such partnerships is increasing, and their scope is broadening. For example, New London Hospital recently entered into an affiliation after a long-standing relationship with D-H. “It’s a subsidiary model, not an asset merger,” says Bruce King, CEO and president of New London Hospital Association (NLHA). “Our employees are not becoming Dartmouth-Hitchcock employees. But major decisions we make—like approvals of budgets or incurring of debt—will be ratified by Dartmouth-Hitchcock.” In addition, a third of the members of NLHA’s board are now appointed by D-H.
New London Hospital is a small but complex institution that is very much a part of its community. It comprises a 25-bed hospital, a 58-bed nursing home and outpatient clinics in New London and Newport, with a staff of nearly 50 physicians and associate providers and an ambulance service. All the beds are “swing beds”—meaning, explains King, that the nursing home beds can be occupied by patients who need “either a skilled level of care or long-term care,” while the hospital beds are certified for “acute status, or we can move them down to skilled status.” And therein lies one of the big benefits of the affiliation. Previously, King says, “I’d go up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and I’d hear people there talking about
3