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November 30, 2020

One year in, ECHN’s Weymouth tackles challenges on multiple fronts

Photo | contributed Deborah Weymouth, CEO of Eastern Connecticut Health Network, sees parallels between the challenges faced by Manchester Memorial Hospital at its founding and the current pandemic crisis.
By By Liese Klein

Manchester Memorial Hospital was founded just after the great flu pandemic of 1918-19, and on its centennial, the hospital’s current leader sees clear parallels in the challenges facing providers.

“We're kind of bookended — pandemic to pandemic — in a 100-year span,” said Deborah Weymouth, CEO of Eastern Connecticut Health Network (ECHN), which operates Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals. “I do think it's kind of poignant to see where we came from and to have this now,” she said of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like all hospital networks, ECHN has had to deal with steep declines in revenue-generating procedures as elective patients shun medical settings. Weymouth blames inconsistent messaging from health authorities for the lingering mistrust of the medical system, even as updated sanitizing leaves hospitals cleaner than ever.

“It’s caused people to question the safety of any provider,” Weymouth said of the ongoing public debate on mask-wearing and COVID-19 safety procedures. “We are far, far safer than going to the grocery store.”

Those paying the steepest price for the inconsistent messaging from national authorities are patients in need of medical attention, Weymouth added. 

“It's been difficult to get to the people who truly need screenings or health care,” she said. “We could have made a difference had people gotten clearer, more concise communication on what to do.”

Challenges ahead

In her post just over a year, Weymouth has had to steer ECHN not only through the difficulties of providing care during the pandemic but also the challenges of trying to improve a troubled hospital system.

The state Department of Public Health has scrutinized ECHN’s Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals, as well as Waterbury Hospital, over quality concerns since shortly after California-based for-profit Prospect Medical Holdings purchased all three care providers in 2016. (Weymouth only oversees the ECHN hospitals. Waterbury Hospital has its own CEO, Lester Schindel). That oversight was extended in late 2019, continuing a period of scrutiny that regulators said was among the longest the state had seen.

Weymouth said she expects the oversight to be dropped next year due to ongoing work with the state to improve care quality.

“We've moved ahead with that,” she said. “We’re anticipating in 2021 we’ll be able to move on and be all set to move forward.” 

Weymouth cited one metric of improving quality: Manchester Memorial has gone 623 days without a central line bloodstream infection, a common measure of hospital performance. 

Meanwhile, two of Prospect’s hospitals, Manchester Memorial and Waterbury Hospital, lost more than 2% of their Medicare reimbursements this year as penalties for having high rates of readmitted patients. Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ranked the two among the three worst in the state for penalties.

Weymouth said ECHN has formed a multidisciplinary team to monitor patients at risk for readmission on a daily basis. Prospect’s 17 hospitals nationwide have also put together a regional task force to reduce readmissions. 

Recent controversy has also arisen over Prospect’s decision to move many of Rockville General Hospital’s (RGH) services in Vernon to Manchester Memorial. Members of the AFT Connecticut union announced on Nov. 18, that they were circulating a petition to restore services to RGH.

Investing in people

For Weymouth, the best way to cope with the system’s challenges is to invest in its people, with new training programs launched on leadership and improving the patient experience. On the hardware side, ECHN has bought a new MRI scanner and three new 3D mammography machines. More than nine projects are in the works to improve facilities and care, she added, while demurring on the details.

Although Prospect is a for-profit company, Weymouth said her primary focus continues to be on the mission of providing quality care for local residents. 

“I’ve always believed in the value that a community hospital gives back to its community, ... also the value of the access to health care, to quality local health care,” Weymouth said. “We play a contributing role in adding value to the community.”

Business roots

Weymouth came to ECHN in Sept. 2019, after a career in health care, including most recently five years leading the UMass Memorial Health Alliance-Clinton Hospital in Massachusetts.

Her first career in banking couldn’t compete with the rewards of working in health care, Weymouth said. 

“At the bank I was able to make wealthy people wealthier, and in health care I was actually able to be part of a team that was saving people’s lives. There is no replacement for that,” she said.

Weymouth said she was drawn to the ECHN role because of the chance to work with a larger hospital system. 

Weymouth’s business training will certainly serve her well as the hospital system faces the financial impact of COVID-19, on top of earlier financial challenges at its Connecticut hospitals. 

In fiscal year 2019 — prior to the pandemic — both Rockville General and Manchester Memorial hospitals lost money, while Prospect’s overall Connecticut operations, including Waterbury Hospital, reported an $8.7-million operating loss, according to the Office of Health Strategy.

And earlier this year the Connecticut Hospital Association projected the state’s hospitals would collectively lose as much as $1.4 billion in fiscal year 2020, even with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid. 

“I think any organization that complied with the regulations and requests from the state, such as stopping elective surgery, certainly had their core business impacted,” Weymouth said, adding she hoped more state aid would help offset the system’s losses. 

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