Outstanding Women in Business: Colombo is a natural-born leader

Photo | Matt Wright Lisa M. Colombo, DNP, MHA, RN

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By Katherine Hamilton

Since her first senior leadership role at 28 years old as vice president at Worcester nursing provider VNA Care, Lisa M. Colombo, DNP, MHA, RN has stood out in the healthcare field.

Although she was 20 years younger than any other member of the leadership team, she had significant clinical experience, as she had been working in nursing facilities since the age of 16.

“This was in the early ’90s. At that time, healthcare decisions were generally made by non-clinicians, mostly men, sitting at the table, not really understanding how the decisions that they’re making impact patient care,” she said. “Health care has evolved so much since.”

Lisa M. Colombo, DNP, MHA, RN, Commonwealth Medicine

Colombo said, as much as she loved caring for patients directly, she can have a greater impact in leadership, while her clinical experience provides her a deeper understanding of the needs of workers.

“I actually was completely taken with the whole notion that health care was a business,” she said. “It opened my eyes to what value a clinician in a leadership role in a healthcare organization would bring to the table.”

A jack of all trades with experience in homecare, ambulatory care, acute care, and academic and community health centers, Colombo is well acquainted with the ever-evolving field of health care.

She has held senior leadership positions, including president and senior vice president, at facilities across the UMass Memorial Health system, including the medical center in Worcester and the hospitals in Clinton and Leominster.

Among her many accomplishments, she helped negotiate an agreement with the Massachusetts Nurses Association to avoid a nurses strike at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, and she oversaw a merger between UMass Memorial’s Clinton Hospital and HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster.

In 2018, she was recruited into the senior-most role of executive vice chancellor at Commonwealth Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School’s consulting and operations division in Shrewsbury.

“Dr. Colombo deserves tremendous credit for prioritizing and promoting diversity and inclusion across all Commonwealth Medicine functions,” said UMass Chan Chancellor Michael Collins, who appointed Colombo to the position. “She has implemented a new, living strategic plan ... to advance optimal health and well-being of the diverse communities the medical school serves.”

Colombo now leads 1,100 employees and manages a broad range of projects, including mental health care access, retirement and disability plans, and, of course, pandemic response.

Initially created to support the Mass. Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Commonwealth Medicine has evolved to collaborate with MassHealth, the state’s Department of Public Health and Department of Mental Health, and other organizations across the nation.

“This last stretch of my career at the medical school has allowed me to pull together all of the experience that I had across like the continuum of healthcare services,” Colombo said. “Little did I know, I've been perfectly prepared to do the work that I’m doing today.”

Commonwealth Medicine supports programs in 27 other states, helping to preserve states’ Medicaid funds for providing services to patients.

“It’s probably by far the most beneficial program that we have because it saves states millions – in some cases billions – of dollars, either in cost avoidance or cost recovery,” said Colombo.

She stepped up to the plate at the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic when she was named incident commander at the state-run Holyoke Soldiers Home, where she led a team in containing a COVID-19 outbreak, which had killed 76 veterans at the facility.

Colombo led Commonwealth Medicine’s four-month regional collaboration with the City of Worcester, Saint Vincent Hospital, and Worcester State University to operate and staff a large-scale vaccination site, administering more than 93,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

“[She] is integrating this clinical perspective, which is obviously focused on providing the highest level of quality and care to people,” said Katie Mick, chief of staff at Commonwealth Medicine. “Everything Lisa does is very intentional.”