Building a Brand New
Community-based Healthcare
System in Lowell
By Christopher Cheney
N
it filling
"white space."
"Our goal is to eliminate the
amount of excess time patients spend
accessing their care," the President and CEO
of Circle Health says. "We want our patients to
feel their care is connected — to ensure that
patients get seamless care."
Deschene has been building these connections since July 2012, when Lowell General
Hospital and Saints Medical Center merged to
form Circle Health. A 30-year veteran administrator at Lowell General, Deschene is leading the
effort to build a community-based healthcare
network linked to the two hospital campuses.
"We set out to be the lowest-cost, highestvalue provider in the region," he says. "We also
focused on how care gets delivered and how
coordinated it is along the continuum (from
primary care to community hospital to the
academic medical centers in Boston). It wasn't
about cost-cutting. It was trying to address
the silo nature of the healthcare system and
deliver on our promise to provide Complete
connected care."
ORM DESCHENE CALLS
Norm Deschene
CEO OF LOWELL GENERAL
HOSPITAL AND CIRCLE HEALTH
8
| MD NEWS Greater Boston
I The
CEO Edition
