Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER 16, 2023 31 POWER 25 | HEALTH CARE James Shmerling S uperhero day has been an annual tradition for the last decade at Connecticut Chil- dren's medical center. This April, the hospital was able to combine it with a groundbreaking for the most significant expansion in the hospital's 27-year history. CEO Jim Shmerling got in on the act, donning a red superhero cape for the accompanying press conference. The $280 million new tower, adjacent to the hospital's current Hartford premises, will house several ambitious new programs, including a fetal surgery center that is expected to make Hart- ford a national leader in the discipline; a NICU unit with 50 private rooms; and state-of-the-art facilities for bone marrow transplant work and gene therapy. The new patient tower is the high- est-profile piece of a broader turn- around effort that's been underway at Connecticut Children's since Shmerling, a Tennessee native, arrived eight years ago. At that time, the hospital had run multimillion-dollar deficits in two of the previous three years. The legacy financial issues revolved around the hospital's size and core patient population, he said. "We're comparatively small … to other children's hospitals, so we don't have the same kind of scale," Shmer- ling told HBJ in April. "We have a lot of children who are enrolled in the Medicaid program, and Medicaid does not pay the cost for the care." His approach to fixing those two problems included supporting the hospital's mission in underserved communities by expanding its overall reach, and thereby tilting its revenue mix toward more sustainable private insurance payments. This strategy was partly achieved by building more outpatient facilities. Where previously the hospital counted 750,000 children in Connecticut as its core patient popula- tion, it has now extended into western Massachusetts and eastern New York, encompassing a potential patient population of 1.2 million children. And, as it has moved south in Connecticut toward communities in Fairfield County, it has begun to serve more families with access to private insurance, improving the payer mix. The southern Connecticut expansion, not incidentally, also builds Connecticut Children's brand in part of the state with potential wealthy donors. Shmerling has also partnered with peer institutions. Connecticut Children's now runs the neonatal intensive care units at eight other hospitals in the region, and for some, their pediatric units as well. Shmerling, who joined Connecticut Children's in late 2015, is not new to major expansions. He previously oversaw hospital construction at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Colorado. The Nashville native is well-known in the industry, having held manage- ment roles at children's hospitals in five states since 1979. He also chaired the board of the national Chil- dren's Hospital Association in 2014. Dr. Bruce Liang D r. Bruce Liang has been dean of the UConn School of Medicine since 2015. In February 2022, he was also named interim CEO of UConn Health, the parent organiza- tion of John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington. Liang will hold onto the interim title until a new UConn Health leader is appointed. The school said in July it began a national CEO search. Liang has been associated with UConn Health since 2002, when he first joined as a physician-scientist faculty member. He took over as dean in 2015. Since that time, Liang oversaw the medical school's implementation of a new team- based and patient-cen- tered four-year curriculum that aims to better prepare future physi- cians for the constant changes in health care. During Liang's tenure, UConn was also the first medical school in the nation to eliminate lectures, while continuing to offer early, hands-on clinical care exposure at the start of medical school along with the inte- gration of basic sciences education. In September, he was one of several leaders to participate in the signing of a renewed and expanded five-year academic affiliation with Hartford HealthCare. Both sides committed to adding new residen- cies and fellowships, while helping overcome the physician shortage by increasing class size and providing the facilities needed for clinical education training. Liang in June also oversaw the opening of a new and expanded UConn Health facility in Simsbury. Prior to joining UConn Health, Liang was an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for 13 years. Liang received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry and molec- ular biology from Harvard University, and his medical degree from Harvard Medical College. Dr. Megan L. Ranney C linician and scientist Dr. Megan L. Ranney took over as dean of the Yale School of Public Health on July 1. Ranney is an emergency physi- cian, researcher and national public health advocate, according to Yale, where she is also a professor. In her position as dean, Ranney is overseeing the school's transition from a department within the Yale School of Medicine into an indepen- dent professional school. Ranney previously served as the deputy dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and had been on the faculty there since 2008. She continues to be an adjunct faculty member at Brown. As an emergency physician, Ranney has gained national recognition for advocacy and research on preventing firearm injuries. Her research has also focused on health interventions in the area of general violence prevention and COVID-19 risk reduction. On the national level, she has had several leadership roles, including co-founding the American Founda- tion for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine at the Aspen Institute. She also co-founded GetUsPPE, a startup nonprofit that helps ensure healthcare providers get personal protective equipment they need. Ranney also is a member of the board of trustees for the National Opioid Abatement Trust. Ranney has provided expert analysis on topics related to health and medi- cine to Congress, along with guidance to non-government organizations. She has appeared on, been quoted in or published opinion pieces in various media outlets, including the BBC, CNN, The Atlantic, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, The Washington Post and The New York Times. 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