New Saint Vincent CEO makes return to Tenet

Photo | Edd Cote Saint Vincent Hospital CEO Carolyn Jackson

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By Grant Welker

Working at a pharmaceutical production site for the drugmaker Roche as a process engineer, Carolyn Jackson eyed her next career step: a plant site manager, someone in a corporate position responsible for oversight of quality and costs.

With that in mind, Jackson went to business school to earn her master’s degree. Coming up on her graduation in 2002, though, the timing wasn’t great for manufacturing. Fortunately for her, the hospital company Tenet Healthcare was on campus recruiting for leadership positions, and an opportunity to shift into a related field was before her.

“I saw a lot of similarities between a hospital CEO and a manufacturing plant site manager,” Jackson said. “You have the community engagement, and quality is first and foremost. You have the staff engagement, the cost and revenue side, and I said, ‘That really is appealing to me.’”

Jackson is now two months into her tenure as CEO of Tenet’s Massachusetts operations, which include Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester and MetroWest Medical Center, which has campuses in Framingham and Natick. She also is the CEO of Saint Vincent itself, where she focuses much of her efforts.

Responding to local health needs
Jackson comes to Central Massachusetts from Philadelphia, where she was the chief operating officer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, an 800-bed academic medical center. She oversaw large construction projects both in that role and in her previous position as CEO of the 188-bed St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.

St. Christopher’s launched a $110-million project in 2012 including a capacity expansion as well as a new center called the Center for the Urban Child designed to treat deep-seated health issues in a poor North Philadelphia neighborhood. The center provides preventative care, care for newborns and mothers, and free legal services for medical needs, among other services.

Jackson doesn’t oversee exactly the same challenges today at Saint Vincent, but the hospital is working to address severe issues including opioid deaths and rising suicide rates.

In Worcester, opioid-related fatalities rose from 80 to 97 last year, and Saint Vincent was fifth highest in the state in 2016 and 2017 for the highest rate of emergency department discharges attributed to opioids at more than 2.5 %, according to a June report by the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.

At Saint Vincent, a response to the crisis has included reducing or avoiding the use of opioid painkillers, Jackson said.

“That’s something hospitals and doctors’ offices can do wherever you are, and really should be doing,” she said, “and if you are prescribing somebody with narcotics, making sure it’s the minimal dosage possible and making sure they’re educated on what could happen.”

Saint Vincent is responding to growing mental health needs. Massachusetts saw a 35% rise in suicide rates between 1999 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

The hospital opened an eight-bed behavioral health wing of its emergency department in May 2018, and plans to expand from 13 to 20 the number of inpatient behavioral health beds.

Beyond that, Jackson said she’s helping the 300-bed Saint Vincent prepare its strategic outlook for 2020 and considering ways Saint Vincent and MetroWest Medical Center might be able to work together more closely. The two hospitals don’t overlap too much today, challenged in part by a travel time making it challenging for physicians to efficiently split their time.

“That’s still something we’re working through,” Jackson said. “There’s not a lot of areas where we collaborate today, but we’re looking forward to growing that.”

Return to Tenet, and Massachusetts
Jackson, who grew up in Delaware and earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware, first worked for Tenet as the CEO of the Lake Pointe Health Network just outside Dallas. She had experience living in Massachusetts from earning her MBA from the Harvard Business School in Boston but wasn’t actively looking to make a return to Tenet until a consultant she knew from Lake Pointe urged her to consider the opening at Saint Vincent and MetroWest.

That consultant, Saumya Sutaria, is now Tenet’s COO. Jackson took over for Jeffrey Welch, who left last July to oversee Tenet hospitals in the Miami area.

“The more I talked to him,” Jackson said, “I decided that’s really a great place to be, and he suggested this opportunity.”

Jackson’s career now takes her to a state known for its top hospitals, but where any leader has to balance public health needs with patient costs and other factors.

Running a hospital requires a leader to be knowledable and innovative, working with community partners, being mindful of regulations and striving for efficiency, said Steve Walsh, the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association.

“It’s tremendously challenging work,” he said.