Trinity Health of New England CEO Reginald Eadie and St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center President Thomas Burke have had to lead during tumultuous times for the healthcare industry.
Michigan-based Trinity Health is a national Catholic health system and Eadie leads its New England region, which includes St. Francis Hospital, Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs, St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury and Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Mass.
Eadie brings a unique background to the job because he’s a doctor and holds an MBA from Michigan State University, giving him both a medical and business background as he navigates the choppy waters of a pandemic and industry consolidation.
Trinity’s $1.58 billion in fiscal 2020 operating revenue ranked third highest among Connecticut health systems, behind crosstown rival Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health.
Trinity Health’s competition with Hartford HealthCare is heating up, possibly to a boiling point.
In January, St. Francis Hospital filed an antitrust lawsuit against Hartford HealthCare and its subsidiaries claiming they are trying to create a monopoly on hospital services by acquiring physician networks, particularly cardiologists, and demanding that they refer their patients only to Hartford HealthCare. The 75-page federal lawsuit alleges “a campaign of exclusion, acquisition and intimidation” and claims that Hartford HealthCare executives have stated in meetings that their plan was to “crush” or “bury” St. Francis.
Hartford HealthCare has said the suit is without merit.
Burke was named interim president of St. Francis in May 2020, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic.
After a national search, he was named permanent president by that November.
The onset of the pandemic prompted St. Francis and Trinity to invest aggressively in telehealth, transforming its care model and committing to hiring “virtualists” to treat patients online. Upgrading physical facilities has also been a focus, with St. Francis opening a new $26.5 million outpatient orthopedic and spine surgery center on its Hartford campus and an ambulatory care center in Rocky Hill.
Burke will also be overseeing a multiyear, multimillion-dollar campus improvement plan in the years ahead.