“Where has she been hiding?”
That was Bob Chauvin’s original thought when he met Rozanna Penney.
“You could just tell she had a presence about her. She was bright, but she was unassuming,” Chauvin, chair of Heywood Healthcare’s board of trustees, said. “She had a self assuredness about her and just a warm kind of nature that you kind of gravitated towards.”
Penney joined the Gardner-based hospital system in 2019 as its chief certified registered nurse anesthetist, and in just four years time, she had become its CEO.
A registered nurse by trade, Penney decided to transition to the administrative side of health care as she saw the field becoming more and more complex with bureaucratic struggles, such as pre-authorizations and reduced reimbursements. She heard providers say they would love their jobs if they could just spend their time taking care of their patients.
Penney wanted to do something about that.
“I see our role as administrators as somebody who removes barriers and makes it easier for clinicians to take care of patients,” said Penney. “The role of administrators is to help them do what they went into healthcare to do.”
Penney certainly had her work cut out for her when she was named Heywood’s CEO in the summer of 2023, taking the reins of the system’s 34-bed Gardner facility, its 25-bed Athol Hospital, and its medical group with an 86-bed mental health facility.
The abrupt departure of the hospital system’s previous leader, Winfield Brown, left Penney tasked with saving Heywood from nothing short of financial ruin.
In October of that year, Penney led Heywood as it voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a situation she said the company’s board knew was inevitable. Still, she was able to give them hope.
“She did a good job with the board of explaining that bankruptcy was not an end, it was a means to a future,” said Chauvin.
In September of 2024, Heywood announced its stand-alone exit from bankruptcy without closing any services, after originally owing its top 20 creditors $31.3 million.
Penney’s honesty and transparency were vehicles that drove the system forward, said Chauvin, especially in a healthcare environment where a lot is taking place at the state level.
“She developed a relationship that they felt that they could trust her, that Heywood was an organization that needed to be supported,” he said. “You were supporting an organization that would have a future and had good leadership.”
He saw her walk the difficult tightrope of bankruptcy negotiations while always keeping at the forefront how decisions would affect the Heywood community.
“If we get to a point that we cannot put our community first, there is no reason for us to exist as a hospital,” said Penney.
When thinking of how to describe her work ethic at the time, and since, Chauvin had to pause to gather his thoughts.
She’s “relentless in her pursuit of ensuring that Heywood is successful in their endeavor to be a strong community healthcare system,” he said.
Penney worked 60 to 80 hour weeks for a year, juggling both the uncertain nature of court proceedings and the sometimes competing interests of different parties.
“It wasn’t easy by any means, but it was one of those things that you almost feel like a calling,” she said.
Even while in bankruptcy, Heywood Hospital in Gardner reopened its six-bed inpatient mental health facility in January 2024 after being closed for more than two years: one of the proudest moments of Penney’s career.
Calling the exit from bankruptcy a group effort of senior leadership, Penney sings her colleagues’ praises.
“I feel that any administrative work really should be for our entire senior team, because there’s nothing I can do as a CEO without my leadership team,” said Penney. “I try to surround myself with people who are more intelligent than I am and listen to them and empower them, and that’s how we have the senior team that we have.”
Penney was instrumental in building that executive team, said Chauvin. Stepping into her role as CEO, Penney had to make difficult decisions to assess and build her team into what it is today.
“I could not be more happy that we bet on her; that we gave her the opportunity to demonstrate to us and to the community, to the state, that she is a brilliant leader and will continue to help Heywood survive and be a great community healthcare organization over the long run,” said Chauvin.
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.
