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Lifetime Achievement: Jody O’Brien

By
Jody O’Brien
Healthcare Heroes

Nurse, Urology Group of Western New England

During Her Long Career, She Has Made a World of Difference

Jody O’Brien

Now 87, almost 88, Joanne (Jody) O’Brien is two decades and change past what the Social Security Administration considers ‘full retirement age.’

But she is still working — two days a week as a triage nurse for the Urology Group of Western New England (UGWNE), in its Northampton office. She’s doing plenty of other things to keep busy, which we’ll get to, but for now, let’s focus on her day job — and the fact that she still has one.

When asked why, her face curves into a huge smile — it seems to be almost permanently like that — and she offers a simple and direct explanation.

“I love nursing,” she told BusinessWest with a voice that would imply this would be obvious if she’s been doing it for more than 67 years. But she wanted to elaborate, and did.

“I lucked out picking nursing as a profession coming out of high school because it’s just been the most rewarding career I could possibly imagine,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it so much that I don’t want it to end. As long as someone keeps me employed, I’ll keep coming to work.

“I absolutely love what I do — I can’t say enough about how great nursing has been for me,” she went on. “It’s a wonderful career to have. I’ve tried so many different aspects of it, and I’ve loved them all. So I figured there’s no sense packing it in if you love what you’re doing.”

Her career has placed her in many settings — from a hospital ship that was part of Project Hope in the early ’60s to Western New England College, where she was director of Health Services; from an eye-surgery office in Hawaii to the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction, where she was a per-diem nurse and, later, director of nurses, with many other stops as well.

“I lucked out picking nursing as a profession coming out of high school because it’s just been the most rewarding career I could possibly imagine. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I don’t want it to end. As long as someone keeps me employed, I’ll keep coming to work.”

But longevity and this variety of professional settings only begins to explain why O’Brien has been chosen as a Healthcare Hero for 2023 in the Lifetime Achievement category. Beyond her various day (and night) jobs, she has undertaken a number of service and volunteer assignments — from reading at Valley Eye Radio to taking care of orphans in Romania; from teaching English to nursing students in China to tagging sharks in Belize; from restoring and protecting turtle habitats in Costa Rica to working at Whispering Horse Therapeutic Riding, supporting riders with disabilities.

All this suggests she could easily have been nominated in several, if not all, the categories of Healthcare Heroes. Because of the length, variety, and broad impact of her work, she is being honored in the Lifetime Achievement category, one that has traditionally been dominated by administrators. In this case, though, it is going to a provider. A provider of care. A provider of hope. A provider of inspiration.

Jody O’Brien with staff members

Jody O’Brien with staff members at the Urology Group of Western New England’s Springfield office.
Staff Photo

Through her 87 years, 67 of them as a nurse, she has seen just about everything, including a global pandemic. Summing it all up, she said her passion for helping others hasn’t dimmed — and has probably only grown stronger — nearly 70 years after she entered nursing school.

This enthusiasm and energy was conveyed by Dr. Donald Sonn, a physician with UGWNE, who was among those who hired her 18 years ago.

“When we first interviewed her, we were struck by how positive and effervescent she was, and how energetic she was,” he recalled. “I’m constantly amazed by her energy and her positive attitude.”

Calling her an “ombudsman” for the practice’s patients, Sonn said O’Brien consistently draws praise for her calm, steady hand (and voice on the phone) and her desire to assist others.

All of this — and much more — explains why she is a true Healthcare Hero.

 

Riding the Wave

‘Cuba si, Yanquis no.’ That translates to ‘Cuba yes, Yankees no,’ and it’s a phrase, and a song, that O’Brien heard repeatedly as she served aboard the USS Hope, the former Navy hospital ship that was chartered to the People to People Health Foundation in 1960, when it was docked in Trujillo, Peru two years later.

“The people who met us at the dock were Communists, and they did not want us there,” she recalled, adding that the exploits of the USS Hope in Peru later became the subject of the book Yanqui Come Back!

O’Brien spent a year on the Hope, earning a $25 monthly stipend. But as those credit card commercials used to say, it was a learning experience that was priceless.

She worked beside a constantly changing team of doctors that performed surgery on the ship and in hospitals on the mainland, with procedures ranging from plastic surgery for burns to work to address cleft palate and hairlip, to removal of tumors, some of which had grown to enormous sizes because the patients hadn’t seen a healthcare provider in years, if not decades.

Urologist Dr. Donald Sonn

Urologist Dr. Donald Sonn calls Healthcare Hero Jody O’Brien an “ombudsman” for the practice’s patients.
Staff Photo

“People would walk for miles to get to the ship to be treated, and we treated everyone who needed it,” she recalled. “It was such a learning experience for me working with all these doctors.
“I was still young and adventurous,” she went on as she talked about how she paused her career, sort of, to serve on the ship, adding that she has remained young at heart and has always, in her recollection, been adventurous.

Indeed, the book on her life and career has many intriguing chapters, some of which are still being written. In literary circles, they would call this a ‘page turner.’

Our story starts in Iowa, where O’Brien was born and raised, and where she decided she wanted to be a nurse. She attended nursing school in Davenport — a three-year diploma program that cost $500.

Upon graduation, she took a job in Davenport, but soon thereafter, she went to Hawaii to stay with a friend who had recently had a baby and wanted her company while her husband was deployed.

It was in Hawaii that O’Brien became acquainted with Project Hope. She visited the ship when it was docked and became intrigued with its mission. After returning to Iowa, she filled out an application to serve in Project Hope as an operating room nurse, and in 1962, she was approved for service.

During her year on the USS Hope, she met a volunteer named Ed O’Brien, from Holyoke. Upon returning to Iowa, she would drive to the Paper City to renew acquaintances. They would marry in 1963 and eventually settle in East Longmeadow.

Thus would commence a series of assignments in the 413, but also well beyond it.

 

Care Package

These included a lengthy stint at what was then Wesson Women’s Hospital, working in labor and delivery, and another as a nurse practitioner in an ob/gyn office.

From 1983 to 1988, she served as director of Health Services at Western New England College, handling the needs of 6,000 students, and also as a per diem nurse at the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction.

She then accepted a travel nurse assignment at Castle Hospital in Kailua, Hawaii. She stayed in Hawaii for a dozen years, also serving as nurse manager of an eye-surgery center and as branch director of Nursefinders of Hawaii. And while in the Aloha State, she earned a master’s degree from Central Michigan University.

“She would go on a trip every three or four months, and it was always something really fascinating — volunteering in some third-world country or teaching children or reading to the blind. She has a tremendous record of service.”

She returned to Western Mass. in 2000 and took a job as area director of Nursefinders of Eastern Massachusetts, and soon thereafter became a flex team manager at Baystate Medical Center, managing 60 RNs, 25 technical assistants, 45 constant companions, and the ‘lift team.’

At the Urology Group of New England, which she joined 18 years ago, she works two days a week — Monday and Wednesday. The former is generally the busiest and perhaps the most difficult of the days of the week, but that’s when the group needs the help, so that’s when she works.

O’Brien’s whole career has been like that, in many respects — showing up when and where the help is most needed.

That’s true professionally, but also in her work as a volunteer, with work that is wide-ranging, to say the least.

Indeed, during the three days she’s not working at the Urology Group — and all through her life, for that matter — she has found no shortage of ways to give back and be there, for both people and animals.

Among them is her work with Valley Eye Radio, where she reads the local newspaper for the benefit of those who can’t read it themselves.

“It makes you feel good to know that, for people who cannot read or have difficulty reading, we can share what’s going on today in Springfield or the United States or the world,” she said. “We can share that information with them.”

Meanwhile, she also volunteers with Greater Springfield Senior Services, helping individuals who can no longer handle their own finances with bill paying and other responsibilities, and with Whispering Horse Therapeutic Riding, a nonprofit that, among other things, brings horses to nursing homes, where residents can feed and pet the animals.

“The way they light up when they see these horses … it’s so gratifying,” she told BusinessWest, adding that she and a colleague will visit facilities regularly — sometimes weekly, other times monthly.

Animals have always been a big part of her life — and her strong track record of giving back. In addition to tagging sharks and restoring turtle habitats, she has also volunteered at animal sanctuaries in Australia to care for koalas, often taking her grandchildren with her on such service trips, introducing them to the many rewards that come with such work.

“At this age, you know you don’t have many more days to fill, so you fill each one of them,” she said, but concedes that she’s always wanted to stay busy.

“She’s done so much in her life … I’ve always looked forward to listening to her talk about trips, her escapades,” said Sonn, choosing that word carefully. “She would go on a trip every three or four months, and it was always something really fascinating — volunteering in some third-world country or teaching children or reading to the blind. She has a tremendous record of service.”

In both aspects of her life — as a nurse and as a volunteer — the common thread has been a desire to help those in need, and this explains why she has been chosen as a Healthcare Hero for 2023.

“I loved working at Western New England; the college kids were a joy to work with,” she said, adding that each stop in her career has been different — and enjoyable. “There’s something about taking care of people and helping them deal with mental and physical problems and seeing what you can do to help them in their lives.”

 

Still Making a Difference

There are many people who have worked well into their 80s in healthcare. And there are many people who have put dozens of lines on a résumé detailing a lengthy list of career stops.

But there are few who have the passion, dedication, and resolve to use their talents and their love for helping others to make a world of difference, in every aspect of that phrase.

Jody O’Brien is such an individual. That commitment has helped her stand out in this field for seven decades. It makes her a Healthcare Hero. n

Lifetime Achievement, Helen Caulton-Harris

By
Healthcare Heroes

Health and Human Services Commissioner, City of Springfield

Public Health Has Become Her Life’s Work

Leah Martin Photography

When then-Mayor Michael Albano invited her to take on the considerable challenge of directing Springfield’s Health Department and Human Services Department as one entity and oversee that consolidation effort, Helen Caulton-Harris was caught somewhat off guard.

She didn’t know Albano, was not active in his campaign for the corner office, and was not expecting any invitations to join his administration.

So when the request came, she had to think about it for a while, but eventually said ‘yes.’ But certainly not with the expectation that 26 years and two mayors (including the current office holder, Domenic Sarno, who has had the job for 14 years) later, she would still have that title on her business card.

“I certainly didn’t see this as something that I would be doing two and half decades later,” she said, adding that she has stayed in this post for several reasons, but especially because she loves not only the work, but also her ability to make a real difference in the community, and also because there is still considerable work to do.

And there are always new and different challenges to meet, not the least of which is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has tested Caulton-Harris and her department in every way imaginable. It has also been a learning experience on many different levels, as we’ll see, and one that has provided some valuable lessons on how things can be done better and more efficiently.

“The way in which our public-health community has shifted because of the pandemic is that we’ve learned to work together,” she told BusinessWest. “We understood that we had to collaborate and coordinate, and that we must share information. We’re no longer working exclusively in silos; we are working across the public-health venue.

“The way in which our public-health community has shifted because of the pandemic is that we’ve learned to work together.”

“Every two weeks, we have a session with all of our partners to talk about our outreach, lessons learned, and best practices,” she went on. “So those things are part of what has happened as far as COVID-19 is concerned — our communication strategies have become more concrete.”

Caulton-Harris is the 2022 Healthcare Hero in the prestigious Lifetime Achievement category, and she has truly accomplished quite a bit in her career, especially this current chapter.

Overall, she has been an advocate, a true believer in the power of information — she preaches education — and a leader who has taken problems head on and achieved notable progress in areas ranging from teen pregnancy to infant mortality; from care for the homeless population to policies limiting smoking in public places; from substance-use disorders to violence prevention.

There are always new challenges, she said, adding that, today, there are many that she and her department are addressing as the landscape continues to change and evolve.

“Today, we’re dealing with the legalization of marijuana; cannabis is legal, but we still need to educate people about it,” she noted. “Also, gaming and problem gambling. We also have an opioid crisis, which is different than other substance-abuse matters because of fentanyl and the cheap way in which individuals are getting their products and how it escalates and has such an impact on our young people and our communities as well.”

Helen Caulton-Harris has tackled many different public-health issues

Helen Caulton-Harris has tackled many different public-health issues over the years, from teen pregnancy and infant mortality to violence, drugs, and HIV/AIDS. Leah Martin Photography

While there have been many accomplishments during her lengthy career, she considers the biggest to be the merger of the Health and Human Services departments into one entity.

“They should not be seen as separate — they flow together,” she said with clear conviction in her voice. “I describe public health as a social-justice movement rooted in science. And Human Services really is about social justice.”

For all that she has accomplished during her life and career, and for the manner in which she has worked to improve the health and well-being of all those living, working, and doing business in the City of Homes, Caulton-Harris is a true Healthcare Hero.

 

A Life’s Work

When asked if she misses the regular weekly press briefings that came to symbolize the early months of the pandemic, Caulton-Harris flashed a wide smile and said simply, “not really.”

Those briefings, which also featured Sarno; Dr. Mark Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health; and Dr. Robert Roose, chief administrative officer at Mercy Medical Center, were conducted to keep city residents informed about was happening and what to possibly expect next, and provide up-to-date statistics concerning cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and more.

She doesn’t miss them because they came to symbolize the very worst days of the pandemic in a city that was hit very hard by COVID. But also because, while Caulton-Harris, as noted, preaches the importance of information and education and still makes regular appearances on TV, she prefers not to be in front of the camera. Instead, she would rather be working behind the scenes, advocating of behalf of area residents and providing a voice for those who struggle to make to make their voice heard.

It has been that way since her early days in the broad realm of healthcare, working with women on the issue of reproductive health, a subject which has, to a large degree, come full circle with the recent Supreme Court vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (more on that later).

“I would talk to them about the choices as far as pregnancy, whether that was to continue the pregnancy, terminate, or adopt,” she said. “So very early on in my career, I became an advocate.”

Later, while working at what is now the Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center, she was influenced by several role models, especially African-American nurses, who showed her that there were career paths for young people like her.

“I got an opportunity to see what the possibilities were for my own career,” she said. “There were individuals from my community who were making a difference in the lives of others.”

“I did not believe it was going to go on for two and half years — we’re still dealing with the pandemic today. Early on, we thought it might be a month or two, but it continues to be a pervasive virus that we’re dealing with.”

In 1994, Caulton-Harris would become executive director of the Area Health Education Center at Springfield Technical Community College, one of six such facilities in the Commonwealth, a role that enabled her to work with young people who were interested in careers in healthcare.

“I got to mentor and nurture them in a way that was very special to me,” she said, adding that, while she was in that post, she was approached by Albano about being the first commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Recalling that conversation she had with the mayor about this opportunity that doubled as a stern challenge, she said it focused on why the departments should be merged and how that should be undertaken, but also how such a merger could help address the emerging health issues of that day.

And there were many of them, she recalled, citing a sky-high teen-pregnancy rate, an equally alarming infant-mortality rate, HIV/AIDS, violence, and drugs, among others.

And it was that conversation that prompted her to leave what was a good position and step into one that would be challenging on many levels but also one that would enable her to impact lives and make a difference in the community.

“I was not quite clear on the politics of the position,” she admitted. “For me, I filtered it with the fact that I really can make a difference in the city by putting policies in place that would stay as a foundation moving forward.”

And that is exactly what she has done.

 

Learning Experiences

While tackling the many challenges that impact health, Caulton-Harris and other city leaders were confronted by the pandemic, which in some ways defines her career, but also sums up her straight-on approach to issues affecting the public.

“The pandemic was something that I was not prepared for and could not have foreseen as something that I would have to deal with,” she told BusinessWest. “I don’t think anyone thought we’d be dealing with a pandemic like we did in 1918, but here we are, 100 years later, dealing with a global pandemic that was devastating the world.

“Very early on, it was clear that this was devastating — our hospitals were overrun with COVID patients; our community was devastated. The Black and Brown communities in the city of Springfield probably got hit the hardest in terms of livelihood and being able to work, so we knew that staying home from some jobs simply wasn’t an option for some people. So it was all-consuming; I lived COVID-19 education every day, and I continue to do that.”

The seriousness of the virus was one issue, Caulton-Harris went on, adding that the degree of difficulty in coping with the situation was compounded by information from state and federal agencies that was often lacking, inconsistent, and at times quite confusing.

“In the early part of the pandemic, we were told that masks were not necessary, and then we were told we needed to mask up,” she recalled. “We did not have vaccines, so education and working with the public became critical. It was my lived public-health experience that enabled me to take on the pandemic. I did not believe it was going to go on for two and half years — we’re still dealing with the pandemic today. Early on, we thought it might be a month or two, but it continues to be a pervasive virus that we’re dealing with.”

As she noted, the COVID experience, if you will, has generated improvement in how those involved in matters of public health communicate, collaborate, and work together to serve the community.

As an example, she cited the work of a collective that came to be known as the ‘VAX FORCE.’

“This was a combination of physicians, community members, researchers … there were 15 individuals who were appointed by Mayor Sarno to be part of this VAX FORCE,” she recalled. “We met to put strategies in place to be able to work with the public, and that manifested itself in vaccination clinics that we had in the North End, the South End, Mason Square, Indian Orchard, and other neighborhoods. We were very intentional about the fact that we had to meet people where they were, and we used all of the expertise of the individuals on the VAX FORCE to come up with a strategy to market and make sure we were hitting all the various communities that we needed to hit.

“That, to me, was a very important strategy, and one that we put together in a way that was different than what we would have done had we not experienced the pandemic,” she went on, adding that this will be the blueprint for how to do things moving forward.

 

The Next Chapter

When asked what might come next for her as she nears retirement age, Caulton-Harris opted to borrow some words used recently by tennis star Serena Williams, who eschewed the term ‘retirement,’ and instead said that she will be ‘transitioning,’ or ‘evolving.’

Caulton-Harris said she will likely be doing some of the same, noting she is working on a book, a personal history of sorts, that she started maybe a decade ago.

“It’s going to be about the journey that I’ve had, from the public-health perspective, but also the personal side,” she said. “I think it’s important to be able to talk about the experiences and let people know the human side of who we are.”

Some would say she’s already written the book, the one about how to be a true leader in public health and make a difference in the community. The one about how to be a Healthcare Hero.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

James Goodwin

By
Healthcare Heroes

Lifetime Achievement

President and CEO, Center for Human Development

Jim Goodwin

Jim Goodwin

In His Long History with CHD, He’s Seen Plenty of Lives Changed

On more than one occasion as he spoke with BusinessWest, Jim Goodwin referred to “short-termers” — employees who, for whatever reason, don’t stay at the Center for Human Development for very long, and don’t get to see the full scope of CHD’s impact on individual lives.

And that’s unfortunate because that impact, he noted, can be slow.

“One of the positives about being here a long time is you get to see how things change,” said Goodwin, the organization’s president and CEO. “We’re not working with a group of people where you sit down and have a conversation and they come away changed. It’s a process.”

For instance, he said, “people that experience serious substance-use issues often try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, and then they make some progress. When you’ve been around a while, you know failure is part of the process, and you see the change over time.

“It’s the same thing with mental health,” he went on. “Certain things in mental health never go away. It’s like diabetes; it’s with you for life. You figure out how to cope with it, how to live with it — and that is a long, hard process.”

That process may include a combination of resources, from medications to therapy to stress-management strategies, he explained.

“When you get to see it happen over time, you see that people can learn skills, they can learn to function normally with various forms of mental illness. You see the difference in people who get services and hang in there and fight the fight and come out the other end. I’ve gotten to see a lot of people come out the other end, develop those skills, and change their lives.”

“People that experience serious substance-use issues often try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, and then they make some progress. When you’ve been around a while, you know failure is part of the process, and you see the change over time.”

In his 42 years with CHD, the last 16 as president and CEO, Goodwin has seen plenty of growth; since 2005, the agency has grown from a $48 million entity to $125 million, and from around 1,300 employees to 2,000. He sees the impact, as he noted, in those individual lives changed, but it’s the sheer number of those stories, and the scope of CHD’s work, that has earned Goodwin the title of Healthcare Hero for 2021 in the Lifetime Achievement category.

“There are a lot of things I’m proud of,” he said, trying to sum up those years. “CHD has had tremendous growth over the years. And as needs have changed, we’ve been able to change and adapt and provide services in more areas.”

Opioid use is one such growth area, he noted. “Over the years, the need for substance-use services has grown substantially, and that has required us to deliver services differently.”

Today, CHD’s services span a wide gamut, including behavioral health and addiction recovery, housing and homelessness, food insecurity, youth welfare, intellectual and developmental disability, child development and advocacy, and more.

Jim Goodwin addresses those gathered to celebrate the 2018 opening of Goodwin House.

Jim Goodwin addresses those gathered to celebrate the 2018 opening of Goodwin House.

“Jim has led CHD to step in and provide services where many others would not, including to people involved with the justice system, the homeless, people with severe mental illness or disability, and many others,” said Ben Craft, CHD’s vice president of Community Engagement, who nominated Goodwin for the award.

One recent example Craft cited is Goodwin House, a 90-day residential program providing substance-use treatment services for male teenagers. The facility and its staff work to help clients not only maintain their sobriety through proven recovery strategies, but also reconnect with their families, education, and job opportunities.

“Jim has quietly built an organization that is racially and culturally diverse and one of the region’s most highly rated employers,” Craft added, “one that has grown with the needs for its services and remained nimble and innovative to keep up with the turbulent environment in which it operates.”

 

Expanding on an Idea

When Goodwin considers CHD’s impact over the years, he’s quick to include the organization’s 2,000 employees as well as its clients.

“These are good jobs with good benefits that allow people to have good lives and do work that they’re proud of,” he said, noting that the broad diversity of his team reflects the makeup of CHD’s clients, most of whom access services in a geographic region spanning from Amherst and Northampton to Hartford and Waterbury, Conn.

It’s an impressive footprint for an agency born from a desire by its three founders — Bill Seretta, Kathy Townsend, and Art Bertrand — to offer community-based care. In the 1960s, Goodwin noted, community services were hard to come by, and people struggling with hunger, homelessness, or simple healthcare needs easily got lost in the system. Young people, particularly those with mental-health issues, were shuffled into state training schools that were more like prisons than centers of care.

“CHD took kids from training schools and served them in foster-care and group-home models, and started to have a lot of success,” he added. “It grew from there. These community-based models started to take off because they were so successful; then we started doing it with adults.”

Today, community-based care remains the heart and soul of CHD’s mission, but the breadth of services has expanded, with more than 80 programs that help people tackle some of life’s toughest problems — often in ways that other agencies hadn’t considered.

“We provide a combination of different types of services,” Goodwin said. “Many can be identified as a mental-health problem or a substance-use problem, but it’s often tied in with other things, especially all the things associated with poverty, joblessness, and homelessness. Many times, especially in the past, agencies would take on one component or the other; they might provide homelessness services or mental-health services. But we’ve been able to combine lots of different services to create a bigger package that does the full scope of things.”

It’s those connections — recognizing the role of social determinants of health and tackling the root causes of issues — that sets CHD apart, but it’s not easy work, Goodwin said. “Some days, it can be very difficult, but when you look at the whole picture, most days I’m really glad we’ve taken all that on.”

It also cultivates an organization with career mobility, he added, as employees can move around and take on different roles as they gain experience in other fields. “One of the good things about CHD is you don’t have to leave to try something new.”

But those connections between clinical and non-clinical supports poses a constant challenge to come up with new ideas and approaches, he added. “You have to be creative.”

Take, for example, Innovative Care Partners (ICP), which is a collaboration between CHD (the managing partner), Gándara Center, and ServiceNet designed to better serve clients in the MassHealth program for their behavioral-health needs. ICP’s care coordinators connect clients with other members of the healthcare-delivery system, including hospitals, primary care, and other providers, across the four Western Mass. counties to help ensure they’re getting needed services without duplication or inefficiencies.

“We get people to follow a set of services that speaks to their behavioral-health needs,” he said, which might include medication, psychiatry, or counseling, but the program also focuses on the factors that get people into health trouble, such as poor nutrition, high levels of anxiety and stress, and high blood pressure.

“Together, primary-care health professionals sign off on a comprehensive plan that speaks to the full range of their needs,” Goodwin explained. “That’s a change. There used to be walls between mental-health services and medical services. Everybody knew that didn’t make any sense, but until recently, it never became a focus of attention.”

 

Learning Experiences

Needless to say, the Center for Human Development has had a challenging 18 months navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. With 850 residential mental-health beds and thousands of clients accessing outpatient care, there was plenty of learning on the fly — especially when it came to telehealth — but everyone came through to continue meeting the needs that drew Goodwin to CHD 42 years ago, and plenty of others.

“We’re proud of our impact, and that includes our economic impact,” he said. “We provide local jobs, and our people are spending money in their local communities, buying homes … a lot of things are happening because they’re here and CHD is paying them. I think we contribute to the economy in a big way.”

But the main impact remains those individual lives that are changed — albeit sometimes very slowly.

“My goal from the very beginning was to have an agency people would be proud to work for and feel good about what they’re doing,” he said, admitting that the work can be tough, navigating thorny issues like homelessness, drug addiction, and young people in trouble with the law.

“That can be very difficult for the workforce,” he added. “But overall, it’s also very rewarding. It’s the type of work you can be proud of and see accomplishment.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Frank Robinson, Ph.D.

By
Healthcare Heroes

This Public Health Leader Is a Visionary and Innovator

Frank Robinson, Ph.D.

“Dr. Frank Robinson is a true visionary. He sees partnerships and systems that most other people don’t see. He doesn’t stop there … and he doesn’t allow other people’s short-sightedness or lack of imagination to get in his way. He persists because he loves to see other people, particularly young people, grow and thrive and achieve their dreams.”

Over the next few pages, you’ll read quite a bit of material that will help explain why Robinson, currently vice president of Public Health for Baystate Health, is one of two Healthcare Heroes in the Lifetime Achievement category for 2019. But none of the words to come can do that more effectively that those at the top.

They’re from the nomination form submitted by Jessica Collins, executive director of the Public Health Institute of Western Mass., a job Robinson once held himself, when the agency was known as Partners for a Healthier Community.

And Greater Springfield has, indeed, become a healthier community because of Robinson, who, over the past 35 years or so, has conceived or been closely involved with initiatives in realms ranging from children’s oral health to asthma; from food insecurity to sexual health; from health education to overall population health.

And who really knows if he would have been involved in any of that had it not been for … Hurricane Agnes.

The storm barreled into Elmira, N.Y. in late June, 1972, flooding the recently opened Elmira Psychiatric Center, where Robinson was working as a psychiatric social worker. That’s was, because the storm put him out of work.

He found new work essentially counseling youths displaced by the hurricane and relocated to nearby Elmira College.

“Dr. Frank Robinson is a true visionary. He sees partnerships and systems that most other people don’t see. He doesn’t stop there … and he doesn’t allow other people’s short-sightedness or lack of imagination to get in his way.”

“A call came out for help because these youngsters were running wild in the dorms unsupervised,” Robinson recalled, adding that he and a friend were dispatched to the scene because they were staff at a facility called the Elmira Neighborhood House — Robinson taught boxing there and knew most of the teens.

In some ways, Hurricane Agnes blew Robinson onto a different, more community-focused career path that, early on, featured extensive work with young people. And, by and large, he has stayed on that path.

Fast-forwarding through his résumé, he worked locally for the Mass. Department of Mental Health (at the same time as the other Lifetime Achievement hero for 2019, Katherine Wilson; see story on page 22); the W.W. Johnson Life Mental Health Center in Springfield; the Springfield Community Substance Abuse Partnership and Prevention Alliance, part of the Springfield Department of Health and Human Services; Partners for Community Health; and Baystate Health, first as director of Community Health Planning and now as vice president of Public Health.

At each stop, he has been a visionary and an innovator, leading initiatives ranging from the BEST Oral Health program to Baystate Academy Charter School to the Baystate Springfield Educational Partnership.

“Over the years, I have worked in positions that have advanced my specific interest in creating a healthier community and preventing health problems from occurring by giving people what they need,” he said while summing up his life’s work in a simple yet effective way, adding quickly that, while progress has been made, there is still a great deal of work to be done.

And he’s still doing it.

Indeed, Robinson, who turns 70 this month, acknowledged that he is working past what would be considered retirement age. He attributes this to both a passion for his work and the simple fact that he has some projects he’s still working on that he wants to see to conclusion.

These include something called 413 Cares, an online community-resource database that provides resource and referral information to residents as well as healthcare and social-service agencies across the region, and also works to make Baystate an “anchor network” within the region.

Explaining the latter, he said that, by adjusting and refocusing some of its spending — in such areas as goods and services, hiring, and real-estate facilities — an institution like Baystate can have an even more profound impact on the communities it serves.

“Simply by changing our business practices in terms of how we spend money — spending it deliberately, intentionally, to benefit communities where there’s been substantial disinvestment or there are substantial disparities — we can change those community conditions,” he noted. “That’s the healthcare anchor institution mission and vision.”

A lifelong desire to change community conditions for the better explains not only why Robinson is still working — and still innovating — but also why he’s a Healthcare Hero. Again.

Background — Check

Indeed, this will be Robinson’s second trip to the podium at the Healthcare Heroes gala.

He was one of a large contingent on hand to accept the award in 2017 in the category called Collaboration in Healthcare. The name on the envelope, if you will, was the Healthy Hill Initiative, or HHI, a broad effort to change the health landscape in the Old Hill neighborhood of Springfield.

Robinson, one of nearly a dozen players involved in the initiative who were gathered around a conference-room table at Way Finders to talk about it, described it as a program that existed at “the dynamic intersection of two social determinants of health — public safety and access to physical activity.”

And he should certainly know. In many respects, he has spent his whole career working to address the many social determinants of health, including poverty, food insecurity, inadequate housing, lack of transportation, domestic abuse, and the stress that results from all of the above.

Retracing his career steps, Robinson said there have been some pivots — such as the one forced by Hurricane Agnes — along the way, and also some pivotal moments.

One of the latter was the consent decrees that eventually closed Northampton State Hospital and Belchertown State School and the creation of community-based programs to serve the residents of those facilities.

Frank Robinson has been called a true visionary by those who have worked with him over the years, and a long list of accomplishments bears this out.

Robinson was involved in this work during his time with the Department of Mental Health, and he remembers it leaving him inspired in many ways.

“Both of those institutions were closed by forward-thinking insiders who worked with progressive outsiders, or advocates, and formed this sort of perfect union around change,” he told BusinessWest. “That was a pivotal event; I knew I could create large-scale community change if you got the formula right and if you got in front of problems, prevented problems, and worked to change the lives of individuals.”

And over the past 40 years or so, he has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to create community change by getting in front of problems and using teamwork to address them.

This has been the formula at each career stop, including a brief stint as deputy commissioner and superintendent of the Northeast Ohio Development Center in Cleveland in the early ’80s before returning to this area and working at the W.W. Johnson Life Mental Health Center, the community substance-abuse partnership, and especially at Partners for a Healthier Community, where Robinson spent nearly 20 years at the helm.

During his tenure there, his ability to convene, create partnerships, and stare down difficult problems resulted in several new initiatives to improve the overall health of the Greater Springfield community.

One such effort is the BEST Oral Health program, blueprinted to address the alarming problem that children with MassHealth had very limited access to oral-health preventive and comprehensive treatment services. Robinson secured state funding to launch a demonstration project in Springfield that became the BEST program; it created a local system of education, screening, and treatment for preschoolers to decrease oral-health disease.

Another example of coalition building during his tenure at PFC is the Pioneer Valley Asthma Coalition, which strives to improve asthma management and indoor air quality in Springfield and other area communities where substandard housing contributes to this ongoing health problem.

The Big Picture

Looking back over his career, Robinson said one of the goals — and one of the big challenges — has been to create change and generate solutions that would have an impact much longer than the typical three-year grant cycle.

“What you really need are initiatives with lasting impact where you can see change occur at a level where you improve the conditions of a whole population — where you can say, ‘we’ve changed community conditions,’” he explained.

With that thought in mind, he said there are two programs that “rise to the top,” as he put it, when he talks about career accomplishments.

One is the Baystate/Springfield Educational Partnership, an initiative that brings hundreds of students into the Baystate system to learn about careers in healthcare and places many of them in internships.

“Over the past 20 years, there have been substantial gains from our ability to work together across sectors and across organizations. And that’s new; there’s that essential element of trust across organizations that didn’t exist 15 years ago or 20 years ago, to be sure. And in spite of the competitive nature of social-service organizations in healthcare, there tends to be more agreement today that there is a public space where we can all come together and make a difference.”

These internships often lead to careers in healthcare, he went on, adding that, over the first 10 years of the program, there are many examples of this.

“Some of them are physicians, some of them are nurses — it’s across the whole spectrum,” he explained. “I know there are youngsters who are now physicians because of this program.”

The other program is the Baystate Academy Charter School, a 6-12 grade school based in Springfield and focused on healthcare careers.

The school graduated its first class of students, 45 of them, in June, said Robinson, adding that there was a 100% graduation rate and each graduating student was accepted at a two- or four-year college.

“The social determinant of health solution there is education,” Robinson explained. “The idea is that, if you graduate from Baystate Academy Charter School, you are college-ready.

“These two programs will be around long after I’m gone, producing change on a large scale and at a population level for our community,” he went on. “I’m very proud of both of them.”

Looking at the proverbial big picture from his unique vantage point, Robinson told BusinessWest there have been significant gains in many areas and many respects, especially when it comes to agencies and providers of healthcare working collaboratively, but significant challenges remain.

“Over the past 20 years, there have been substantial gains from our ability to work together across sectors and across organizations,” he explained. “And that’s new; there’s that essential element of trust across organizations that didn’t exist 15 years ago or 20 years ago, to be sure. And in spite of the competitive nature of social-service organizations in healthcare, there tends to be more agreement today that there is a public space where we can all come together and make a difference.

“This is especially true with matters of equity,” he went on. “We understand that there are significant challenges for large segments of our community, and the only way you’re to change those conditions is if people work together collaboratively and pool resources. There’s a clear recognition that this is the way to go.”

Elaborating, Robinson said there have always been coalitions, but today there is greater strength and “sophistication” to such partnerships, which has generated progress in a number of areas.

But when asked if Springfield is a much healthier community than it was 20 or 30 years ago, Robinson paused for several seconds and said ‘no.’

He based that answer on standard health measures and still-apparent gaps, or disparities, in overall care as viewed through what he called a “racial-equity lens.”

“If I compare poor people to the average, and black or brown people to the average, there are huge health-disparity gaps,” he noted. “The infant-mortality rate is still three times higher for black women than it is for white women; although the rate for black women has improved over time, the gap still exists.

“We find that same gap in issues such as low birth rate,” he went on. “These are measures not necessarily of the quality of healthcare, but measures of the conditions under which people live. Those gaps still exist, and so this city is still not healthy.

“We’re great as a community, and as a health system, when it comes to dealing with stuff that occurs inside the skin,” he continued, referring to the care provided at Baystate and other area facilities. “But if you think of health as things outside the skin that actually determine one’s health, we haven’t really improved there; poor people are sicker.”

These problems are not unique to Springfield, obviously, said Robinson, adding that most large urban centers continue to have these inequities in overall health based on income and opportunity. Progress has come, slowly, and the hope is that, by continuing to build coalitions and get in front of problems, more progress can be achieved.

This is what Robinson has spent a career doing, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

View to the Future

“Dr. Frank Robinson has worked tirelessly over the past 30 years to address public health and health inequities in our city and beyond. He is a recognized leader and a visionary in creating systems that make it easier for people to access needed healthcare services and creating systems in our neighborhoods that make it easier for people to make the healthier choice.”

There’s that word ‘visionary’ again. This time, it was put to use by Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, in that same nomination submission, as he went on about trying to put Robinson’s career, and his contributions, in perspective.

And visionary certainly fits. He’s been able to look at the community he serves, identify needs, and most importantly, create solutions for meeting those needs.

He’s spent a lifetime doing that, and that’s why he’s a Healthcare Hero.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Katherine Wilson

By
Healthcare Heroes

While She Manages People and Programs, Her Job Is About Changing Lives

Katherine Wilson

It’s probably fair to say that the discussions had at the dining room table when Katherine Wilson was in high school were not like those going on in most households in the mid’-60s.

Indeed, Wilson’s father was a physician, specializing in family medicine. Beyond the work at his practice, he was one of the pioneers of a sort when it came to the broad subject of healthcare management.

“From having a solo private practice, he got into the development of systems of delivery of healthcare,” she recalled. “He started an HMO, he was the first medical director of Community Health Center … my father was a big part of the systems that are now in place.

“We had discussions around the kitchen table about healthcare,” she went on. “His interest was in healthcare management, and he was progressive in his thinking at a time when they didn’t have community health centers and they didn’t have HMOs; he did a lot of work with the community physicians and community hospitals.”

One might say that Wilson, certainly inspired by not only those dinnertime talks, but later work at her father’s practice and in one of the first community health centers, has a made a career — a long and very successful career — of working innovatively and in partnership with others to find new and better ways to manage healthcare, and especially mental and behavioral healthcare, in this region and across the Commonwealth.

She’s done this in a variety of settings, most notably, for the past 30 years, as president and CEO of Behavioral Health Network Inc.

Created in 1992 through the merger of four entities — the Child Guidance Clinic of Springfield, Agawam Counseling Center, Community Care Mental Health Center, and the Hampden District Mental Health Clinic — BHN now serves more than 40,000 individuals annually in a service area that stretches across the four western counties.

There are 40 locations in all and more than 2,000 employees. Together, they provide and manage services that come in a variety of forms, from detox centers and ‘step-down’ facilities to a wide variety of counseling services for adults, youth, children, couples, and families; from a 24-hour crisis-intervention service to a host of developmental and intellectual disability services.

“In a society where, even today, stigma may still surround mental illness and those it affects, Kathy not only keenly understands, but goes to every length to help others understand as well. Kathy Wilson has changed innumerable lives for the better, and she’d be the first to say her work is far from finished.”

Wilson has spent the past three decades building and shaping BHN into a $115 million network that continues to expand and find new ways to provide care and a support network to those in need. In recent years, she has been at the forefront of efforts to better integrate general healthcare with behavioral healthcare, particularly in the Medicaid population, with the goal of driving down the ballooning cost of care nationally (more on that later).

And certainly this work to build and manage BHN goes a long way toward explaining why Wilson was chosen as a Healthcare Hero for 2019 in the Lifetime Achievement category. Actually, she is one of two who tied for the high score. The other winner is Frank Robinson, vice president of Public Health at Baystate Health (see story, page 19). Suffice it to say, these two won’t have to introduce themselves when they meet at the Healthcare Heroes gala on Oct. 17. They both worked for the Department of Mental Health in the late ’70s, and both worked to create community programs for residents of Northampton State Hospital and Belchertown State School after those institutions were ordered closed. And they’ve been working in concert on many initiatives ever since.

But there is more to this honor than the vast portfolio of programs and initiatives that is today’s BHN. Indeed, it’s also about a lifetime spent advocating for those with mental illness, substance-abuse issues, or developmental disabilities, anticipating and then meeting their needs, and then asking the difficult but necessary question, ‘what else can be done?’

It’s a philosophy, or mindset, perhaps best summed up with these words from her nomination form, submitted by her daughter, Amy Greeley, formerly a nurse manager at BHN:

“Kathy exemplifies a unique combination of innate compassion and fervent determination that’s led to the helm of a regionally renowned institution. It’s from a position from which she never stops working for greater, more advanced, and even more accessible services for all who need them.”

“In a society where, even today, stigma may still surround mental illness and those it affects, Kathy not only keenly understands, but goes to every length to help others understand as well. Kathy Wilson has changed innumerable lives for the better, and she’d be the first to say her work is far from finished.”

Care Package

It’s called the ‘Living Room.’

As that name suggests, this is a warm, home-like place where anyone age 18 or older can come to “regroup and get help,” said Wilson.

Elaborating, she said the facility, one of many that BHN has carved out of old, mostly unused or underutilized manufacturing buildings in the Liberty Street area, is one of the latest additions to the agency’s portfolio. It was designed for people in a developing crisis, a current crisis, or a post-crisis situation, and is a place where people “can find help from others who have had similar experiences and who can provide support, encouragement, and guidance,” according to a brochure on the facility.

The Living Room, as noted, is just one of dozens of facilities under the BHN umbrella, and its creation speaks to Wilson’s ongoing work — and mission — to continually find new and different ways to meet unmet needs and build support networks for those who desperately need them.

And, as mentioned, this has been her career’s work — going all the way back, in some ways, to those discussions at the dining-room table.

Retracing her route to the corner office at BHN, Wilson said that, after working at her father’s practice and other health settings while in high school and college, she eventually decided that psychology, not healthcare, would be her chosen field; she earned a bachelor’s degree in that field at Denison University and a master’s in clinical psychology at SUNY Plattsburgh.

After a very short stint as a psychotherapist, she applied for a job with the Department of Mental Health, and was hired as a planner during that critical time when Northampton State Hospital and Belchertown State School were ordered to close.

“It was my responsibility to identify individuals from both institutions, look at what their needs were, and see what we could create in the community,” she recalled, adding that she worked to develop some of the group homes that are in use today. “I also worked with agencies that began to adopt the agenda of creating community programs to support people, such as the Community Care Mental Health Center in Springfield, which created day programs so individuals could get some of their rehabilitation in a clinical setting.”

The consent decrees that shuttered the institutions in Northampton and Belchertown coincided with national initiatives imbedded within the Community Mental Health Act, established by President John F. Kennedy. It made federal funds available to create more community systems of care, said Wilson, adding that, locally, a consortium of agencies was created to administer this flow of federal money.

“We got together and said, ‘survival means you have to get bigger, you need to have a stronger base at the bottom to support what we do, and this will give us a platform for growth.”

Called the Springfield Community Mental Health Consortium, it administered a number of initiatives, including hospital supports, group-living environments, outpatient systems of care, emergency services, and more, said Wilson, who transitioned from working for the state to being employed with the consortium as a planner.

“It was my responsibility to help establish the Community Mental Health Center range of services,” she explained. “Now that we had more people in the community living with mental illness, we needed to create the system of healthcare support.”

When the Reagan administration closed the tap on federal money for these services, with funding to be secured through state-administered block grants instead, the agencies that were part of the consortium broke apart and continued to do their own work, said Wilson, who then went to work with Child Guidance Clinic of Springfield, first as Business and Finance director and then executive director of the Child Guidance Clinic of Springfield.

As funding for mental-health programs became more scarce, Wilson said, she and the directors of three other agencies — Agawam Counseling Center, Community Care Mental Health Center, and the Hampden District Mental Health Clinic — decided that the best strategy was to merge those entities into one corporation.

“We got together and said, ‘survival means you have to get bigger, you need to have a stronger base at the bottom to support what we do, and this will give us a platform for growth,’” she recalled, adding that this new entity would become BHN.

And over the years, it would continue to get bigger and widen that base of support, as those administrators knew it had to, through additional mergers and the addition of many new programs.

Room to Grow

As president and CEO of BHN, Wilson wears a number of hats and logs tens of thousands of miles each year traveling back and forth to Boston for meetings on a range of topics and with a host of groups and individuals.

As for those hats, Wilson said she is the face of BHN and, for many, a first point of contact. She also considers herself a problem solver and a “convener,” a strategist, a mentor for many, and even an interior designer.

“I’m often the one that picks the colors for the walls,” she said, referring to the seemingly constant work to open and renovate new facilities, not only at what has become a ‘BHN campus’ off Liberty Street in Springfield, but across the region, while also noting that much goes into to picking those colors.

All those skills have been put to use over the past 30 years, an intriguing time of growth and evolution for BHN as it responds to emerging needs within the community, said Wilson, who cited, as one example, profound expansion into addiction services.

“One of the areas we identified maybe 10 years ago is that we were seeing many more of the parents of the children we were seeing at the Child Guidance Clinic, and many more adults coming in to adult outpatient clinics having mental-health issues co-occurring with substance use,” she explained. “And we said, ‘we can’t just treat mental-health problems without acknowledging the fact that there is a substance-use disorder concurrently, and that we really need to think about building a system of care that serves that population.’”

As a result, BHN collaborated with Baystate Health, which had a community-based system of care that included a detox and some community group-living environments for post-detox care, said Wilson, adding that Baystate asked BHN to manage those facilities and eventually transfer them into its system of care.

“We inherited Baystate’s system of community services for those with addiction,” she said. “And once we did that, we got established with the Department of Public Health and its Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, and we became known as an agency that could handle co-occurring treatments as well as individuals whose primary diagnosis was addiction, and from there, they helped us grow a system of treatment for people with substance-abuse disorder, and that really took off because the state was making significant investments in that world.”

That system now includes two detox operations, two step-down facilities, and a number of beds in what are called ‘residential recovery,’ or group-living facilities, she told BusinessWest, adding that this is just one example of how BHN continues to grow and evolve.

And it’s also just one example of how Wilson has led efforts to improve access to a wide array of care at a time when more people need access. The creation of the Northern Hope Center and Recovery Services in Greenfield, blueprinted in response to needs created by the opioid crisis in Franklin County, is still another case in point.

And these initiatives provide ample evidence of the additional emphasis placed on integrated healthcare and behavioral healthcare with the twin goals of improving population health and bringing down the cost of care, said Wilson, adding that BHN has been at the forefront of these efforts.

“This is what the federal government wants its funding to support, particularly for the Medicaid population,” she explained. “This is the population whose behavioral health — addictions or mental health — really interfere with their managing health.

“You have this small group of people that is driving high costs to Medicaid and both commercial and private insurance,” she went on. “So the move these days is for physicians and healthcare systems to work with behavioral-health systems of care and provide wrap-around services for individuals to see if you can manage the behavioral health, because that will help bring the cost of healthcare down.”

BHN adopted this rather profound operational shift several years ago, said Wilson, adding that, overall, it is part of her job description to keep the agency on the cutting edge of trends and developments in healthcare, while also making sure it remains viable and able to function properly in the years to decades to come.

That means continuing to find more ways to grow the network (the ‘N’ in BHN), building upon its base of support, and developing new methods for providing all-important access to care.

When asked about her most significant accomplishment, she quickly changed the subject of that question to ‘we,’ meaning BHN, but in doing so still managed to sum up her career’s work.

“I think we’ve created excellent, value-based, top-of-the-line service delivery for people who need access, sometimes very quickly, to good treatment,” she noted. “I have excellent medical leadership on both the addiction and behavioral healthcare side, and we hire really good, skilled, competent people. So I think people who are not used to getting good access to care now get it.

“Also, we’ve hired so many people that we have helped come from an addiction to sobriety, reunification, and now they’re BHN employees,” she went on. “To me, that warms my heart to know that people have been able to turn their lives around with the help of BHN.”

Change Agent

Which brings us back to that passage from Wilson’s nomination form. There are a number of key phrases within it that explain why she will be at the podium on Oct. 17 to receive her Lifetime Achievement award.

There’s the part about battling the stigma attached to mental illness, something she’s been doing for more than four decades. There’s also that point about how she would be the first to acknowledge that her work isn’t finished — because it never is.

But perhaps the words to remember most are those concerning ‘changing thousands of lives for the better.’

Indeed, while Wilson manages people, programs, and facilities for BHN, changing lives is what she does for a living.

And that’s why she’s a Healthcare Hero.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Lifetime Achievement: Robert Fazzi

By
Dr. Robert Fazzi
Healthcare Heroes

He’s Spent a Half-century in the ‘Helping Profession’

Dr. Robert Fazzi

Dr. Robert Fazzi

There’s more than a little irony attached to the fact that Bob Fazzi’s office has a window that looks out on what was the main gate to the old Northampton State Hospital.

Indeed, Fazzi, the Healthcare Hero in the Lifetime Achievement category, has spent his life working diligently to keep individuals out of institutions like the massive mental-health facility that once dominated the Northampton landscape in myriad ways, and make them part of the community — the one word that probably best defines every aspect of Fazzi’s life and work.

He was doing such work back when his career was getting started as he joined the organization known as Downey Side, which focused on helping to keep delinquent youths out of juvenile institutions and get them into group homes where many layers of support were available.

It was the same when he became the first director of the agency now known as the Center for Human Development. Back then, it was called the Center for the Study of Institutional Alternatives, a name that spoke volumes about its purpose.

And it’s the same, although on a different level and scope with Fazzi Associates, the company he started 40 years ago and incorporated in 1995. Its stated mission is to make a real difference in healthcare by strengthening the quality, value, and impact of home care, hospice, and community-based services.

Fazzi Associates has been a leader and a pioneer in this sector, developing products and services — including the industry’s first home-health patient-satisfaction services — as well as research to make agencies stronger and better able to serve their patients.

The company has grown steadily over the years, so much so that it has had to relocate to larger quarters several times. With the last such move, Fazzi scouted a number of sites, including Tower Square in Springfield, but opted to stay in the community that by then had become home — but in a much different setting.

And in a poetic sort of way, that new mailing address, 11 Village Hill Road, just a few hundred yards from where the state hospital’s administration building, ‘Old Main,’ once stood, represents a lifetime of work well done.

And done in what Fazzi referred to as the “helping profession.”

That’s the term he applied to not only the home-care field, but hospice and the broad human-services spectrum, all touched in one way or another by the company he launched — and the man himself.

Jim Goodwin, the current president and CEO of CHD, who was hired by Fazzi in the late ’70s, describes him as a tireless advocate for those in need, a true leader, visionary, motivator, consensus builder, and manager who was ahead of his time in many ways.

“Today, you hear about CEOs being trained to hire people smarter than they are, to hire people that know things they don’t know,” said Goodwin. “He was one of the first people to actually do that; he hired people like that and made himself successful before that kind of thinking was popular; he put together all the component parts and put the right people around him.”

Fazzi, who noted that he was influenced by a number of mentors in his life, including Father Paul Engel, founder of Downey Side, Paul Doherty, one of that agency’s early board members, and many others, said he’s tried to take the values they’ve impressed upon him and pay it forward, if you will, while also becoming a mentor and inspiration to others.

“I had some great mentors in my life — some people who influenced in my life in a very positive way,” he said. “I’ve tried to do the same for others.”

This manifests itself in a number of policies, formal and informal, at Fazzi Associates. For example, the firm gives away 10% of its profits every year to nonprofit organizations, and has a policy of giving every employee 16 paid hours to volunteer at any nonprofit health, human-service, or anti-poverty organization.

As he talked with BusinessWest, Fazzi was embarking on another new chapter in his life and career. Indeed, after a lengthy search for the right partner, he recently sold the company he founded to Mediware Information Systems Inc., a portfolio company of TPG Capital and a leading supplier of software solutions for healthcare and human-service providers and payers.

He will serve in a strategic advisory role with Mediware, and also be one of the founding board members of ElevatingHome, a new organization created to elevate the role, impact, and influence of the home- and community-based healthcare field.

So, while he’s not exactly retiring, he’s moving in that direction, a step that’s providing some anxiety about what comes next, but also a chance to reflect on his work and his career, which he did for BusinessWest.

At Home with the Idea

While Fazzi is proud of his mailing address, the team assembled to work there, and its many accomplishments, he’s equally proud of something else: how much mail gets delivered there every day.

Indeed, in a community that boasts institutions such as Smith College and Cooley Dickinson Hospital, more pieces are probably delivered to Fazzi Associates than any other location in Northampton.

That’s because those home-health patient-satisfaction surveys, among others developed by the company, must be sent there for processing rather than to the specific agency being evaluated.

“We get almost 1 million pieces of mail a year from patients,” he noted, adding that surveys cannot be completed online at this time. “We compare agencies by how well they do with patients.”

The volume of mail is one qualitative measure of not only how much Fazzi Associates has grown over the years, but also how Fazzi’s career has evolved and touched ever more lives over the decades.

And, as noted earlier, Fazzi may not have known early on what direction his life and his career would take, but he did know he would be getting involved with his community in many ways.

Bob Fazzi

Bob Fazzi has been described by others as a visionary, motivator, mentor, and manager who was in many ways ahead of his time.

“I came from a strong, community-oriented family,” he recalled, noting that he grew up in the Forest Park section of Springfield. “My parents were involved with the church, they were involved with different things within the community; we were always involved.”

During college, he said he was “lost,” as many people who attended in the late ’60s were, but still managed to get involved with a number of groups and organizations, many with community-minded missions and reasons for being.

After college, he had planned on going into AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), and thought he had been accepted into that program, but it was so disorganized, as he recalled, that six months later he still wasn’t sure.

While waiting to hear from VISTA, Father Engel invited him to get involved with Downey Side, and he did, living in a number of group homes and working as a community organizer.

He spent only a few years with the program, but its mission, and Engel’s approach to carrying it out, had an indelible impact on Fazzi’s career track and approach to life itself.

“I mention Downey Side all the time, even though I was only there two or three years, and that was a long time ago,” he recalled. “Father Engel was really evangelistic about it, saying, ‘we’ve got to get these kids out of these institutions.’ He was always saying, ‘these kids don’t belong here — we have a moral responsibility to help them.’ That really resonated with me.”

Fazzi eventually left Downey Side to be the first director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Alternatives, which was somewhat of a radical concept back then, he noted, although there was plenty of data to back up that basic premise — and data would be the foundation for the work that would dominate the rest of his career.

The new center started with one program, something similar to Downey Side’s in that the goal was to help keep young people out of institutions, but its mission quickly expanded, he noted, citing as one example that the families of these young people were often challenged by a host of issues, so programs were developed to assist them.

“We found that, in some cases, some of the parents were dealing with severe mental illness; they were up at the state hospital,” he said, referring to the facility in Northampton. “So we began to get involved with the Department of Mental Health.

“The value piece was the key,” he went on. “The value was the least-restrictive alternative; where’s the best place to service people in the least-restrictive manner?”

The answer to that question was “in the community,” he went on, adding that what became CHD was a clear leader in the movement to place individuals with behavioral-health issues in residences within the community.

And while the concept made sense on many levels, there were many individuals who didn’t want such residences in the neighborhoods.

Goodwin remembers some fierce battles with residents in Springfield and West Springfield in particular, and that Fazzi stood his ground and fought hard for those he was working to serve.

“I mention Downey Side all the time, even though I was only there two or three years, and that was a long time ago. Father Engel was really evangelistic about it, saying, ‘we’ve got to get these kids out of these institutions.’ He was always saying, ‘these kids don’t belong here — we have a moral responsibility to help them.’ That really resonated with me.”

“He took a lot of risks,” Goodwin recalled. “In the beginning, when we first opened group homes, there were terrible battles with neighborhoods; people would come out and threaten him and throw things at him. But he always stuck to his guns and worked hard with people in the community to get them to understand the value of community-based programming.”

By the late ’70s, Fazzi knew he wanted to start a new chapter in his career — one that would build on those that came before — and focused on consulting work in realms such as home health and hospice care.

“I felt I wanted to be involved in healthcare, but not the human-service side,” he explained, adding that his doctorate is in organizational behavior and he considered himself proficient at planning and organizational change. His plan was to take those skills and put them to work in consulting to other agencies involved in healthcare.

In Good Company

To say that starting and then growing Fazzi Associates into a business that now employs more than 40 people was a learning experience would be an understatement.

And it started with the first bill he sent.

“I did some consulting work for an agency in Worcester, and they paid me $500,” he recalled. “I sent them a bill, and I called myself ‘Management Consulting’ — very clever; I really stood out with that. He sent it back saying I either had to incorporate or have my name in the title.”

He was set to incorporate but found out that this cost $1,000, twice what he made for the first job. So he opted for plan B and just put his name on the invoices moving forward.

In time, though, and not much of it, ‘Fazzi’ would become more than the name on the bill. It would become synonymous with excellence and innovation in the home-care and hospice realms as the company developed new products and services to help clients better serve their customers and measure their performance.

So much so that, when Fazzi finally decided to incorporate in 1995, and was mulling a name change while doing so, advisors told him the name ‘Fazzi’ had too much name recognition and too much clout for him to consider a change. So he didn’t.

Fazzi recalled that, while he started out working for other people, he always considered himself entrepreneurial.

At CHD, for example, he said the agency was funded by the state, which was often if not always behind in its payments. “I remember having to put my house up in order to carry the organization, and there were other people who did the same thing; if you believed in it, that’s what you did.”

With Fazzi Associates, he started out doing planning and training, with most of the early clients involved with home care and hospice. But the scope of services quickly grew, as did the client list.

While doing organizational-improvement work, home-care agencies would often ask if they were doing a good job, he recalled, adding that he replied, in general terms, that he wasn’t the one to be answering that question; clients should be. And when he asked those agencies if they had patient-satisfaction surveys, most all of them didn’t. And the ones who did lacked that one that would be considered valid.

So Fazzi created one, and before long it was providing them to hundreds of agencies. Then, when the Department of Health and Human Services created the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS), Fazzi made sure his company became an expert on the subject and began offering OASIS education.

In 2009, responding to the industry’s need to optimize operations to focus on patient care, Fazzi introduced outsourced medical coding, and is now the largest coding company serving the home-health and hospice industries. Through its operational consulting division, the company has helped hundreds of agencies by putting in place best practices in structure, clinical and operational practices, and supervisory models.

Still another contribution Fazzi has made involves conducting scientific best-practice research and then giving that information away for free to the entire industry. The first such study, titled “Collaborating to Compete: A National Study of Horizontal Networks,” was released in 1996. Others to follow included the National Home Care Re-engineering Study, the National Best Practices Improvement Study, and the National Quality Improvement Hospitalization Reduction Study.

“We’re absolutely indebted to our industry — we’ve been in this field since 1978 and believe we have a responsibility to give back to our industry,” he explained. “We feel the best way is to provide every agency in the country with insights on best practices that will make them stronger and more viable.”

Transition Stage

While doing that for his industry, Fazzi wanted to do the same for his company, so he put in place a succession that has Tom Ashe, one of five major partners in the company, succeeding him as CEO.

That leaves him with a problem of sorts.

“I love coming to work every day — I can’t wait to get up and go to work,” he said, adding that, like others facing the transition to retirement, he’s somewhat — OK, maybe a little more than somewhat — apprehensive about what the next phase of his life will be like.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’ll be doing, but it’s a pretty safe bet that that he will stay involved within the helping profession and find new ways to put his vast experience, energy, and compassion to work helping others.

That’s what he’s been doing for a lifetime, and with very positive results for the community known as Western Mass. And for evidence of that, all he needs to do is look out the window toward the gates of the state hospital that no longer exists.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

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