A Bangor hospital’s new president wants to use his experience in Aroostook County to address financial challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic while improving patient access to the care and specialists they need.
Gregory LaFrancois starts as Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center’s new president July 1, Northern Light Health announced Tuesday. He joined the hospital system in 2016 and currently works as AR Gould Hospital’s president.
LaFrancois, who grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, will continue working as Northern Light Health’s senior vice president as well.
LaFrancois is entering the role at a critical time for EMMC, which is one of Northern Light Health’s 10 hospitals around the state. The medical center, like others in Maine and across the nation, is working to bounce back after being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to staffing shortages and scaling back some services.
The new president acknowledged those challenges and said he plans to use his experience leading multiple hospitals, including one in Presque Isle, to ensure patients continue getting quality care, whether they’re in Bangor or rural parts of the state. In an interview Wednesday, he emphasized recruiting new staff, building up specialty services and making specialty services self-sustaining, and making mental and behavioral health needs more accessible.
“This is like taking my position at AR Gould and making it statewide,” LaFrancois said about his new role. “I consider us the backstop for The County and consider EMMC the backstop for the northern three quarters of the state, potentially the entire state.”
EMMC serves other Northern Light hospitals in Maine and those outside the system, he said. This is especially important for rural facilities that need to move patients for a higher level of care, and LaFrancois likes that he’ll be able to improve that process as president.
Staffing is critical for hospitals to thrive, and EMMC is operating with fewer licensed beds because there aren’t enough medical workers, he said. That means the community doesn’t receive the proper care.
LaFrancois wants to see a stronger effort to recruit and take care of its nurses so that EMMC is a place where they want to work, he said. Nursing has opportunities beyond the bedside, he said, and thinks more people might be drawn to the field if they understood its breadth.
Burnout happens primarily when people aren’t listened to and start to feel like a cog in a machine, he said.
“If you give people a voice and they have some control over their work environment and the way we do business, you become a lot more resilient than you think,” he said. “There’s a solution to burnout, and we’ll get there.”
LaFrancois also spoke about the high volume of patients in EMMC’s emergency department, particularly those with mental and behavioral health needs. EMMC stretches itself as much as it can to help patients, but an emergency room is the wrong place to deliver those services, he said.
Some wait hours and or even days at a time in emergency rooms around the state for a psychiatric care bed at Acadia Hospital, where a $49.2 million expansion is underway to address the bottleneck.
“It is not fair to a patient to be on an emergency department cot for weeks at a time,” he said. “That’s going to be an area of focus for me — getting people treated in the right setting.”
That means working with area partners to use resources effectively, LaFrancois said. Maine needs more outpatient treatment options, and the state should invest in places such as Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor and Rivers Edge Behavioral Health Services in Springfield, he said.
Although EMMC has cut back on some services to aid in its financial recovery — eliminating cataract, glaucoma and oculoplastic surgeries in March, for example — LaFrancois said he does not plan to make cuts or want to see the hospital become smaller.
LaFrancois, who has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in health care administration, said when a hospital grows its revenue, it also grows its capacity. At AR Gould Hospital, he turned finances around by growing services, which then became self-sustaining, he said.
He wants to see specialty services like cardiology, which is limited in rural areas, attract quality specialists to serve patients from around the state.
As his July start date approaches, LaFrancois is eager to get to know the people who work at EMMC and understand their needs, which he hopes will eliminate anxiety they might have about a new leader. He emphasized the importance of transparency and giving people the autonomy to run departments and grow in their jobs.
“We’ll set the course together,” he said. “We as a group need to decide, ‘Where is the stake in the ground?’ and ‘Where are we going to take EMMC?’”
