Daily News

Baystate Announces Leadership Appointments, New Name for Wing

SPRINGFIELD — With the change of Wing Memorial Hospital’s parent company from UMass Memorial Health Care to Baystate Health expected to take place on Sept. 1, Baystate Health announced leadership appointments for its Eastern Region and a new name for the Palmer hospital: Baystate Wing Hospital.

As of Sept. 1, Dr. Charles Cavagnaro III, now president and CEO of Wing Memorial Hospital, will be appointed president of Baystate Health’s Eastern Region, which is comprised of Baystate Mary Lane Hospital, Baystate Wing Hospital, and the employed medical practices and medical centers in that region. As he assumes this leadership position, Cavagnaro has appointed Dr. Shafeeq Ahmed chief operating officer of Baystate Health’s Eastern Region. Ahmed will also continue in his role as chief medical officer of Baystate Mary Lane Hospital and Baystate Medical Practices Eastern Region.

As president of the region, Cavagnaro will provide strategic, executive, and operational leadership for the two hospitals there, which provide inpatient medical, surgical, gynecological, and behavioral-health services; emergency services; as well as a range of primary-care and other outpatient services for about 80,000 people in that region. He will report to Dennis Chalke, senior vice president of Baystate Health Community Hospitals and senior vice president and chief financial officer of Baystate Health.

Cavagnaro has served as president and CEO of Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers for the past 15 years. Before that, he was Wing’s vice president of Medical Affairs. In 2013, he served as interim president of UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. Amid a challenging financial environment, Cavagnaro and his team have led Wing to serve a greater number of patients, add hospital beds, and increase the depth and breadth of services in its health centers and outpatient practices.

The hallmark of his leadership is a focus on quality and safety that led to an ‘A’ safety rating for Wing from Leapfrog Group and Top Performer status from the Joint Commission on core accountability measures. Cavagnaro is a board-certified primary-care internist in Belchertown and sees patients on a weekly basis. He is a Six Sigma and Lean Green Belt in healthcare quality-improvement processes.

Cavagnaro completed his residency in internal medicine at UMass Medical Center and is a graduate of Cornell University Medicine College in New York City. He is a member of the American College of Physician Executives and the American College of Healthcare Executives, and a fellow of the American College of Physicians. He was a founding member of the American Academy of Hospice Physicians, which is now known as the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. He has served as a medical examiner for District IV of Hampshire County, and as a member of the board of directors of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the Red Cross. He presently serves on the American Hospital Assoc. Regional Policy Board for the New England Region.

Ahmed was recently named one of ‘100 Hospital and Health System Chief Medical Officers to Know’ by Becker’s Hospital Review. Prior to his arrival at Baystate Mary Lane Hospital, Ahmed had served as president of the medical staff, chief of Ob/Gyn, and a member of the hospital board of directors at the Naval Hospital in Cherry Point in North Carolina. Ahmed is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist at Baystate Medical Practices – Mary Lane Ob/Gyn in Ware, and sees patients on a weekly basis.
 Over the next several months, Cavagnaro and Ahmed will be working together as part of a larger, broadly experienced team to develop the integration strategy for Baystate Health’s Eastern Region.

The name Baystate Wing Hospital aspires to honor the hospital’s more-than-100-year history, and recognize the vision and contributions of the Wing family and the countless others who have contributed their time, talents, and money to making Wing the strong community health provider it is today, while also celebrating Wing’s new affiliation with Baystate Health.