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.

When she felt the first contractions at 11:15 p.m. New Year’s Eve, Renai Townsend thought she had time to get to Boston to deliver her second child. “I thought they were Braxton Hicks contractions, which I had before,” she said. Renai called her parents to come over to watch her 2-year-old son, Will...