Southcoast Health and Care New England announced Tuesday that each organization’s Board has voted to move forward with their proposed affiliation into an eight-hospital system spanning southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Charles R. Reppucci, Board Chair for Care New England, and Jean F. MacCormack, Board Chair for Southcoast Health, said that both parties will now move toward the execution of the affiliation agreement and subsequent initiation of the required regulatory review processes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, both organizations will continue their collaborative due diligence reviews, and begin to develop plans to operate an integrated health system capitalizing on each organization’s strengths in patient services and population health management.
“Southcoast Health and Care New England are among the pioneers in this latest move toward accountable care,” said Lynn Nicholas, FACHE, MHA’s President & CEO. “Cross-state and regional affiliations like this are going to become more common, providing health systems scale necessary for assuming risk for covered lives, recruiting top-notch specialized talent and most importantly providing opportunities to more seamlessly complement and enhance clinical services that require special expertise and technological investment.”
Under the proposed framework for the new entity agreed upon by each Board, Southcoast Health President and CEO Keith Hovan will serve as the President and CEO of the new health system parent company; Care New England CEO Dennis Keefe will become CEO of the population health initiative for the unified system; Care New England’s Board will select the new Chair of the system parent Board, and the Southcoast Health Board Vice Chair will serve as its Vice Chair. Southcoast Health and Care New England will each select 10 individuals in all to serve on the new system parent Board of Trustees.