September 2005

Medical Staff Bulletin

Message from the Chief of Staff

We have opportunities in the next couple of weeks to say an "official" goodbye to Joe Zaccagnino as he turns over the reins of Yale-New Haven Hospital to Marna Borgstrom. Elsewhere in this newsletter are dates, times, and places where receptions will be held. Also listed are some major milestones of the last 22 years during which Joe served as either chief operating officer or chief executive officer of Yale-New Haven Hospital.

In reflecting on Joe's tenure leading Yale-New Haven Hospital, it is tempting to stress the tremendous expansion of the physical assets of the medical center, the remarkable financial stability over two decades of relentless cost shifting, managed care and unfunded indigent care, or his determined resistance to a brutal corporate campaign to organize our workers. Others will surely give him greatest credit for recruiting and retaining a highly professional and effective management team. Without minimizing the significance of these accomplishments, I believe Joe's most critical contribution has been to drive clinical process improvement throughout both Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale New Haven Health System.

Improving clinical processes, patient safety, and outcomes depends on three indispensable functions: leadership, organization and skill. Joe provided the leadership at the highest level of the organization. After the sentinel Institute of Medicine publication of "To Err is Human" in 1999, he challenged Yale-New Haven Hospital to optimize patient safety and insisted that we develop related metrics and targets to demonstrate to ourselves that we are succeeding. He made patient safety and improved clinical processes the first priority in the Yale-New Haven Hospital business plan and assigned himself to the committees formulating these goals. He made these clinical goals the primary topic of retreats for clinical leaders and senior and mid-level hospital managers.

Joe also knew that Yale-New Haven Hospital needed structure and organization to drive clinical process improvement. He ensured that standing committees such as the Performance Improvement Leadership Group and the Patient Safety Steering Committee provided oversight to the efforts of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) and the Department of Quality Improvement Support Services. He drove creation of a new Performance Management initiative across Yale New Haven Health System, the acquisition of necessary information technology and the establishment of a Balanced Scorecard (Dashboard) so the performance of the hospital and system relative to quality objectives was on every manager's desk top. Finally, he committed to providing clinical leaders and managers with the skill sets required to identify critical issues, collect and analyze relevant data and function as effective agents of change. For this purpose, he established an Institute for Excellence and committed heavily, in partnership with General Electric, to the tools of Six Sigma.

Yale-New Haven Hospital, our medical staff, and our community are greatly indebted to Joe Zaccagnino. He has created a legacy that will endure and greatly benefit all of us and our patients for several more decades.

Zaccagnino retires after almost 36 years of service

Joseph A. Zaccagnino, president and chief executive officer of Yale-New Haven Hospital will be retiring as of September 30, 2005 after more than 35 years of service to Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS). Zaccagnino began his career in 1970 as an administrative fellow after earning a master's of public health in healthcare administration from the Yale University School of Medicine. He was appointed Yale-New Haven Hospital's executive vice president and chief operating officer in 1978 at the age of 32. In 1991, he went on to become president and chief executive officer of both the hospital and the Yale New Haven Health System.

During his tenure, Zaccagnino led the development of such critical initiatives as the formation of the Yale New Haven Health System in 1995 with responsibility for Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital, Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital and Greenwich Hospital, as well as an affiliation with Westerly Hospital in Rhode Island.

Under Zaccagnino's leadership, Yale-New Haven Hospital has enhanced its role in the community. The hospital currently provides more than $7 million annually to support community health programs and has recently announced a multi-million dollar, multi-year community investment program in association with its proposed 497,000-square-foot, $430 million proposed Clinical Cancer Center at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Zaccagnino's career reflects hospital's and system's milestone achievements

• 1978 - Master planning for YNHH facilities and construction of South Pavilion began
• 1982 - Air Rights Garage and the South Pavilion opened
• 1982 - Opened the Maternal Special Care Unit for high-risk pregnancies
• 1983 - Announced the first in vitro fertilization in New England; CDC selected YNHH as Connecticut's center for the treatment of AIDS
• 1984 - Opened the Northeast's first skin bank for burn treatment
• 1985 - Opened Connecticut's first fetal cardiovascular center and first inpatient child psych unit
• 1988 - First heart-lung transplant in state; opened first bone marrow transplant unit
• 1993 - Appointed Marna Borgstrom as EVP and COO; opened YNHCH
• 1995 - Expanded YNHHS with addition of Bridgeport Hospital
• 1998 - Greenwich Hospital joined YNHHS
• 1999 - Signed an historic affiliation agreement with the Yale School of Medicine
• 2000 - Acquired Yale Psychiatric Institute and opened the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital
• 2004 - Opened the Shoreline Medical Center in Guilford; announced plans for new Cancer Center

Refer items for the next issue of Medical Staff Bulletin via phone, fax, e-mail or mail to:
Peter N. Herbert, MD
1063 Clinic Building
P: (203) 688-2604, F: (203) 688-7152
herbertpn@ynhh.org
or
Katie Murphy
Marketing & Communications
GB 443
P: (203) 688-2492, F: (203) 688-2491
Katie.Murphy@ynhh.org

Back issues of the Medical Staff Bulletin:

• August 2005
• June 2005
• March 2005
• January 2005
• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• May 2004
• April 2004
• March 2004
• February 2004
• January 2004
• January/February 2003
• October/November 2002
• August/September 2002
• April/May 2002
• February/March 2002
• January 2002
• November 2001
• July/August 2001

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Last revised: September 28, 2005 (mv)

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