GREENFIELD — In a rural area like Franklin County, community hospitals like Baystate Franklin Medical Center often serve as vital health care hubs, offering services from pediatrics and oncology to surgery and addiction treatment, and beyond.
It’s a good thing, then, that the hospital is welcoming a new president and chief administrative officer this week whose varied career has spanned as wide a range of those services as could be hoped for.
Cindy Russo of Cheshire, Conn., the former vice president of operations for the central region at Hartford HealthCare, took Baystate Franklin’s reins last week, as Dr. Thomas Higgins returned to his role as the hospital’s chief medical officer after nearly a year as the interim president.
Higgins’ role will also be expanded to include oversight at Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield.
Russo’s career in medicine began just as she left high school about 30 years ago, on the advice on one of her guidance counselors. Following graduation, she pursued an education in nursing at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and became a registered nurse, soon after finding work at a community hospital in Connecticut.
“I heeded the advice, and it served me well,” she said. “I started my career, and I worked at the bedside for a while.”
But soon, she found herself taking on her first leadership role as the hospital’s charge nurse — a position she said matched her personal skill set more closely.
“I realized that was really more where my calling and my skills would be best utilized,” she said, noting that her clinical background gave her a good base to help the hospital navigate its day-to-day operations. She used her skills as a mentor and coach for her team and as a negotiator to make sure things ran smoothly.
“Those skills weren’t necessarily used at the bedside, but I learned through my bachelor’s program that they were there and inherent in what I could do,” Russo said. “When I got into the management arena, I saw that’s where I was led to.”
Since then, Russo’s career has seen her run the gamut between all types of health care, including geriatric, academic, mental health and acute care. She’s helped lead a number of large hospitals, including Hartford Healthcare, Yale University Health Services and Health Plan in New Haven, Conn., and Masonic Geriatric HealthCare Center in Wallingford, Conn.
The Baystate Franklin position will be her first outside Connecticut. She said she was drawn to the organization as she considered the next step in her career because executive level positions aren’t particularly common and the hospital’s culture matched up with her own values.
At the helm of Baystate Franklin, Russo will find herself serving a rural county with a population that’s spread out over Greenfield’s hinterland and that trends toward the older side, demographically. The region has also been battered by the ongoing opioid and heroin addiction crisis.
“Those are woes that as a health care provider we need to pay attention to,” she said. “We need to find the right things, to work together, to solve these issues. The opioid problem is one we certainly see in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts maybe even more so.”
She said she hopes to get down to the root causes of the addiction epidemic and fight it from that point.
“We, as a society, owe it to our citizens to find out why this is happening, first and foremost — not just treat the individual with the problem, but really try to delve into and find out what’s the root cause and what can we do to make a difference in that,” she said.
Russo said her experience working in geriatric facilities has given her a solid background in the particular needs of an older population.
“We need to make sure we’re taking care of everyone’s needs, but at the same time understand that there is a senior population that continues to age and has a certain quality of life, and we need to make sure that those years are just as special to them as their younger years,” she said.
Moving forward, Russo said she’s excited to help Baystate Franklin keep moving along the path it has been following and further expand its services while bolstering community outreach.
To that end, she said she hopes to ensure that the hospital’s new $26 million surgical wing is used to the fullest extent possible.
“We want the surrounding areas and beyond to know the capabilities of the organization and make sure they’re aware that we’re here and ready to serve their needs,” she said.