Health and Human Services Secretary Walsh Visits South Shore Hospital
Dr. Allen Smith, MD, MS, President and CEO of South Shore Health, and Pamela O’Leary, Chair of the South Shore Health Board of Directors, along with other senior leaders, recently welcomed Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh for a tour of South Shore Hospital.
“Today was an opportunity to provide Secretary Walsh with an up-close look at the capabilities of South Shore Health, and to learn more about our role as a leading community healthcare organization with several highly regarded clinical programs across a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services.” Smith said.
“We are a critical access point for those receiving care from across the South Shore, resulting in being one of the most rapidly growing health systems in Massachusetts. We are very grateful that Secretary Walsh was able to take time to visit our campus, engage with our providers and staff, and learn more about our areas of expertise, and our deep commitment to the communities we serve,” Smith said.
The tour included a stop at the hospital’s Emergency Department, the third busiest in Massachusetts by patient volume. Like many Massachusetts-based providers of emergent care, the South Shore Hospital ED staff has been challenged with unprecedented patient volumes, due in part to higher acuity cases and an aging population, along with more Brockton area patients coming to South Shore Hospital for care as a result of the ongoing closure of Brockton Hospital.
Secretary Walsh also heard from leaders about the health system's commitment to patient quality and safety and its innovative approaches for providing care at home such as the health system’s Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) program and evolving hospital at home program.
During the visit, conversations with Secretary Walsh also included the hospital’s busy maternity and birthing units, where many Brockton-area babies have been born since the Brockton Hospital fire in February.
In response to the significant reduction of hospital and maternity services in the Brockton community, South Shore Health worked with Brockton Hospital to create a pathway for Brockton-area families to receive obstetric and maternity care at South Shore Hospital, Secretary Walsh was told. This partnership has resulted in over 20% more births from Brockton-area patients at South Shore Hospital over the summer months.
Secretary Walsh is very familiar with hospital operations, having served in executive leadership positions at hospitals in Massachusetts and New York, including CEO of the Boston Medical Center (BMC) health system for 13 years and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
