Southcoast Health

Southcoast Health is a nonprofit, charitable healthcare system serving southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Established in 1996 as Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital in Wareham joined as one entity.

Southcoast Health Visiting Nurse Association has been an early adopter of telehealth and remote patient monitoring, partnering with HRS to implement an RPM program with an impressive seven percent 30-day readmission rate among 2,621 high-risk patients.

Mission

Southcoast Health is a not-for-profit community-based healthcare system with multiple access points that provide an integrated continuum of health services throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Their hospitals include Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital in Wareham; they partner with Acadia Healthcare to offer additional resources at Southcoast Behavioral Health Dartmouth.

Southcoast Health’s mission is to deliver world-class clinical excellence with care. This means ensuring optimal results for our patients, communities, and employees and integrating research, education, and innovation into its operations. Southcoast aims to improve health throughout its communities by providing access to high-quality healthcare and encouraging healthy lifestyle habits.

As it serves as the initial and last point of contact for patients and patient families, making a lasting positive impression is paramount. Furthermore, our employees strive to foster an atmosphere of respect and kindness to create an outstanding patient experience for our patients and their families.

Southcoast Health boasts over 55 service locations, including three hospitals. Additional offerings include physician networks, urgent care centers, cancer centers, and many ambulatory facilities. Furthermore, over 600 providers work throughout Southcoast’s service region – making them leaders in electronic medical record technology usage.

Southcoast Health also operates Volunteer SouthCoast, a community outreach program that matches volunteer opportunities with their skills and interests. Southcoast has also signed the President’s Pledge with other national health sector leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and reach a net-zero carbon footprint by 2050.

Southcoast Health team witnessed marked improvements in application performance after transitioning to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Navisite’s skilled resources were able to detect and resolve process issues that their previous hosting provider couldn’t address, giving the company more freedom in accomplishing strategic tasks like rolling out new functionality for applications.

Vision

Southcoast Health strives to deliver world-class clinical excellence with care to residents in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island through three hospitals: Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital in Wareham. Southcoast also operates numerous service sites, such as physician practices, urgent care centers, Visiting Nurse Associations (VNA), and two cancer centers.

Southcoast Health System is managed by an elected Board of Trustees and a non-profit corporation that coordinates activities among charitable affiliates. Furthermore, Southcoast is part of the Acadia Healthcare system – offering community-based care with multiple access points across Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Southcoast Health was established in 1996 and comprises three partner hospitals-Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital in Wareham-and numerous service locations such as physician offices, urgent care facilities, Visiting Nurse Association, and two cancer centers. Furthermore, Southcoast has an expansive physician network comprised of more than 675 providers.

Health systems often utilize PeopleSoft for finance, supply chain, and human resource systems. Before adopting PeopleSoft in-house, they would run these applications via managed hosting providers. However, that provider required rigid processes while the health system needed more flexibility to effectively manage its complex applications ecosystem. Since switching to OCI and partnering with Navisite, the health system has seen considerable improvement in infrastructure and application performance – Navisite’s expert resources were able to identify and rectify issues the previous hosting provider wasn’t capable of fixing; for instance, providing more precise eight-hour refresh windows so refreshes can be stopped whenever necessary.

Values

Southcoast Health is committed to treating its patients with dignity and respect. We value empowering individuals and families to take ownership of their health working collaboratively with doctors, community partners, and patients to live healthier lives. Furthermore, Southcoast Health values providing high-quality healthcare at an affordable cost while constantly seeking ways to innovate the services provided.

SouthCoast Health was awarded ACO Certification from the Health Policy Commission (HPC) for both of its accountable care organizations: Southcoast Accountable Care Organization and Southcoast Community Alliance – servicing over 40,000 MassHealth members from Fall River, New Bedford, Wareham, Attleboro, and surrounding areas. Both systems earned a Level of Excellence for focusing on learning, equity, and patient-centric care models.

Southcoast Health System stands out as an innovator thanks to a program it created to reduce patient “sitters.” Instead of hiring more observers and assistants, Southcoast created “safety zones,” two semi-private rooms accommodating four patients with very high risk of falling. Staffers specially trained for working here reassessed admission criteria every shift to make sure these patients remained at risk for falls. Southcoast also implemented other changes, like clustering fall-risk patients in specific areas of the hospital, redesigning equipment, and increasing coordinated handoffs between caregivers – further reinforcing caregiving capabilities within healthcare organizations and improving coordination between caregivers themselves.

Another innovative service the Neuroflow platform provides is virtual behavioral health care, facilitated by clinicians using remote management of behavioral needs such as psychiatric or substance use disorders. Through using it, the system has avoided an additional 150 home visits while giving access to mental healthcare rights in its homes for its patients. Furthermore, partnerships within ACOs allow this program to expand further in reaching more individuals.

Goals

Southcoast Health was established in 1884 as a non-profit system to deliver nationally recognized care with an individual touch. Boasting three hospitals – Charlton Memorial in Fall River, St Luke’s New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital Wareham – as well as over 500 physicians that make up its network, Southcoast Health offers acute and primary care services, along with efforts at disease prevention through comprehensive outpatient services provided in doctors’ offices, urgent/ambulatory care centers and labs throughout its region.

Southcoast Health stands out among healthcare organizations by making great strides toward its Triple Aim goals of better health, improved patient experience, and lower costs. For example, Southcoast revamped its employee benefit plan after years of experiencing steep cost increases; with assistance from consulting firm Cammack Health, they implemented various strategic changes that have saved $17.2 million compared to national trends while keeping employee contributions at the same level for four years – all without impacting employee contributions!

The organization has also accomplished outstanding community results through various innovative initiatives. One such home health program replaced in-person visits with remote patient monitoring (RPM), which reduced in-home nursing visits while building physician/patient trust and increasing communication between them. RPM also reduced 30-day readmission rates among high-risk patients by seven percent over 16 months, saving over $500,000 overall.

Southcoast Health is committed to investing in its workforce. The organization boasts an intensive internship and residency program, collaborates with top schools for advanced practitioner education opportunities, and boasts a 25% retention rate – significantly higher than industry norms. Furthermore, Southcoast Health boasts an outstanding workplace reputation, ranking on Zippia’s list of Best Companies To Work For in New Bedford as an employer of choice.

Southcoast Health plans to introduce a chatbot this year to give users easy access to healthcare providers and hospital locations. They aim to meet the expectations of an increasingly digital workforce who demand seamless online experiences for managing their healthcare.