Sharon Hospital president sees promise in new partnership

SHARON — After years of negotiations, Sharon Hospital is now officially part of the Northwell Health network. Christina McCulloch, the hospital’s president, said during a June 11 interview that the merger could help address some of the issues that plague rural healthcare centers.

“When you bring two organizations of this size together, you do have more leverage in many ways,” she said, pointing to staffing difficulties as a key area where the new partnership could offer real support. “When you’re looking at recruitment, which is certainly a challenge in Sharon and always will be due to its rural nature, having a partner will certainly benefit us.”

In early May the New York-based healthcare group finalized its union with Nuvance Health, which has operated Sharon Hospital since 2019, and also oversees hospitals in Danbury, Norwalk and New Milford as well as three additional facilities in the Hudson Valley. In a May 7 press release, Northwell President and CEO Michael Dowling described the merger as an investment in regional healthcare, while Margaret Crotty, who chairs the nonprofit’s Board of Trustees, is quoted as saying it is “an unprecedented opportunity a more integrated, regionally connected health system across Connecticut and New York.”

McCulloch shared their enthusiasm, reporting that now, six weeks after the merger was announced, “there’s really quite good energy around our relationship.” She said that several weeks prior, members of the Northwell leadership team visited the hospital to bookend the new partnership with a day of celebration. “You could just feel the energy and excitement about the partnership.”

The new, integrated healthcare system now employs 104,000 staff members across Connecticut and New York, including 22,000 nurses and 13,500 providers dispersed across 28 hospitals, 1,050 ambulatory care units and 73 urgent care centers. Before the merger, Northwell had already been the largest private employer in New York State for several years, according to its website.

No money exchanged hands as part of the deal, but Northwell pledged to invest at least $1 billion in Nuvance hospitals.

Hospital consolidation is a nation-wide phenomenon and has had critics in the past decade for causing hiked patient prices and deteriorating the quality of service at medical centers in certain instances. A 2020 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patient experience generally worsened at hospitals that were acquired by larger systems, though the Harvard Medical School reported that the study’s lead author qualified that some cases of mergers improving hospitals cannot be ruled out.

McCulloch is confident that Nuvance joining the Northwell banner is one such instance. “It’s not about cutting resources and cutting services. It’s about optimizing what both of those organizations have, ultimately strengthening the access to care for everyone that lives in the community.”

She further explained that Northwell’s hospitals are consistently highly ranked and it was the only healthcare employer in New York to make Fortune Magazine’s 2024 rankings of best workplaces in the state.

McCullough said she was enthusiastic to work with such a decorated partner, as Sharon Hospital had also received its share of accolades, including receiving five stars from the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services five years in a row and the only hospital in Connecticut to achieve the honor in 2024.

While integrating with Northwell is the immediate focus, McCullough said, the hospital has much planned for the future including bolstering its primary care capacities. “Primary care is the foundation of any community,” she said.

She mentioned that plans also exist to build up specialty departments, such as orthopedics and cardiology, the latter of which has already seen growth with the addition of cardiologist Dr. Sheri Harrison just over a year ago.

McCulloch assured that labor and delivery services at the hospital are guaranteed for a further five years. The maintenance of maternity services was established as a condition to the state attorney general William Tong’s agreement to the proposal.

McCulloch said she is grateful to be part of a broad and resource-rich network that can provide residents quality immediate care and prompt connections to additional services elsewhere if they are required. “Rural hospitals across the nation are closing and shrinking and having to make really difficult [decisions], just to be financially stable and be able to be there for their communities,” she said.

“Sharon hospital is really lucky to be a part of a larger organization so that we can benefit from those shared resources.”