June 8, 2015
FOCUS: FAMILY BUSINESS AWARDS
2015 Central Mass Family Business Awards - AdCare Hospital
PHOTO/MATT VOLPINI
From left: David W. Hillis Jr., vice president; Susan B. Hillis, treatment director; Jeffrey W. Hillis, president; David W. Hillis, chairman and CEO; Patrice M. Muchowski, vice president of clinical services; and James W. Hillis, facilities director.
By Livia Gershon
Special To The Worcester Business Journal
Before heroin addiction in New England became the subject of incessant media coverage, before David W. Hillis Sr. built what is now the only specialty substance abuse treatment hospital in Massachusetts, and before his wife, two sons, brother and daughter-in-law were working with him there, Hillis knew a lot about running a hospital. When he was growing up, his father was CEO of Athol Hospital and his mother was a nurse. At 16, he washed pots and pans in the hospital kitchen, and later worked in the maintenance and housekeeping departments.
“I'm sort of a health care brat,” he said.
In 1968, when Hillis became CFO of what would become AdCare, it was known as Doctor's Hospital, and it was just one of six or seven acute-care hospitals serving the general population in Worcester. By the mid-to-late 1970s, he was serving as CEO, and it was becoming obvious that the city couldn't support so many hospitals.
Everyone was looking for new markets to grow into, and a law passed during that decade created a new requirement for insurers to cover substance abuse treatment in Massachusetts. So Doctor's opened a 10-bed alcohol treatment unit. It grew quickly, and in 1985, the hospital closed its other units and focused exclusively on substance abuse treatment.
The next year, Hillis bought the hospital from the local physicians who had owned it and renamed it AdCare, a name that put it at the top of its category in the phone book. The A and D were a subtle nod to the alcohol and drug problems the hospital treated.
“I wanted to say what we did, but I didn't,” Hillis said. “Even though there's still a stigma now, in those days there was even a greater stigma.”
Hillis helped fight that stigma not just on the job but also in the attitudes he passed on to his kids. His son, Jeffrey W. Hillis, now president of AdCare, said he was at the hospital a lot as a kid. Starting at 14, he worked in housekeeping, and later in maintenance and accounting. “I sort of grew up here, in a way,” he said.
Jeffrey Hillis said his early experiences at AdCare shaped the way he saw substance abuse issues.
“We treat the patients that the rest of the community doesn't want to treat,” he said. “People who complete treatment and live a recovery-based life are wonderful people.”
Viewing addiction as a disease comparable to any other, the family retained AdCare's identity as a hospital — not a rehab center or residential facility. David Hillis said that allows them to treat not just addiction but physical or mental illnesses their patients may also be suffering from.
“The ability for us to have a comprehensive service was always very important for us,” he said. “We can take very complicated patients that the other treatment facilities in the field cannot take, and yet we can also take the less complicated cases.”
Wide-ranging network
In addition to its 114-bed inpatient center in Worcester and a treatment center in Rhode Island that it acquired last year, AdCare has a network of outpatient facilities, with services ranging from full-day programs to monthly counseling, as well as support for families. It also has a separate arm serving correctional institutions.
“They're one of the most respected treatment programs in the country,” said Mark J. Covall, director of operations and communications for the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, where Jeffrey Hillis serves on the board of directors and chairs the Addiction Treatment Committee. “They've developed a very unique treatment model which is a hospital-based addiction treatment program.”
Covall said he thinks AdCare's unusual status as a family-run facility helps them take a longer view.
“They've built an impressive program,” he said.
To the Hillises, operating as a family business is valuable, but it's also important that each family member carve out his or her own niche. David W. Hillis Jr.—David Sr.'s son and Jeffrey's brother—holds a master's degree in psychology and works as vice president of outpatient services. David Sr.'s wife, Dr. Patrice Muchowski-Hillis, vice president of clinical services, is a psychologist and researcher. David Jr.'s wife, Susan B. Hillis, AdCare's clinical treatment director, is a licensed social worker, and David Sr.'s brother, James W. Hillis, serves as director of environmental services.
After earning his law degree, Jeffrey Hillis worked at Deloitte & Touche for three years before returning to the family business. When he went to AdCare, he said, he knew working with his family might be a bit odd.
“We frequently make a joke about (how) sometimes Thanksgiving dinner ends up being like a board meeting,” he said.
But, if business can seep into family time, the ethos of family life suffuses the business too. David Hillis Sr. said he knows it's a bit clichéd to say his staff and patients are like family, but that's a metaphor he uses every time he talks to newly hired workers about treating patients who can sometimes be hard to handle: “In my opinion, there's one easy way to provide quality care. The way to do it is simple: Treat the patient as if it's your mother.”
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