Hartford Business Journal

10 Hartford Business Journal•January5,2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com was going to be a new player." Moving forward, Karl said his team is rethinking the role of ECHN's two hospitals, including having each specialize in different services. Manchester Memorial's focus could be on OB/GYN and orthopedics, while Rock- ville General could focus on eating disorders and bariatrics. Both hospitals, however, would main- tain emergency departments. Karl says ECHN's strategy to join a larger health network is necessary for independent hospitals like his to sur- vive, as the Affordable Care Act pres- sures providers to lower medical costs and improve patient care. Combine that with shrinking reimburse- ment levels — particularly among Medicare and Medicaid patients who account for a com- bined 60 percent of ECHN's clientele — and lower patient volume, as people are encour- aged to visit lower cost urgent care centers, and it creates a perfect storm for hospitals. "We receive 88 cents [in government reimbursement] for every dollar spent on a Medicare patient and 65 cents for every Medicaid patient," Karl said. "Our fee-for- service model is not sustainable." The solution, Karl argues, is to achieve greater economies of scale through con- solidation, a trend at work both in Con- necticut and nationwide. Tenet's $105 million deal to acquire ECHN, however, drew significant scru- tiny from state regulators and lawmakers as well as unions and other groups con- cerned about the proliferation of for-profit hospitals in Connecticut. Karl said politics played a role in the doz- ens of restrictions placed on the Waterbury Hospital deal, adding that he attempted to salvage the deals after Tenet backed out. "It's the purchasing power of a larger organization that allows a smaller organi- zation like ECHN to offset the reduction in reimbursed costs," Karl said. Karl said the healthcare industry must transition from a fee-for-service to a more risk-based model that offers financial incentives for quality patient care. "Today, a patient could visit the emer- gency room, have X-rays, need rehab, home health, follow up medical care," Karl said. "With a fee-based approach, those would all be separate expenses." In the future, Karl said, there will be one bundled payment for all of those services that would be split by providers, which is why hospitals need to be part of a larger health- care network. "If that patient needs repeat care, the reimbursement would be less the second time," Karl said. "There's an incentive to get the care right the first time." n Karl Bye Berger-Sweeney Brennan Quick whose campuses are set amid suburban or rural settings, Trinity's urban mien gives the it the opportunity to infuse students, faculty and staff with a richer, more varied learning/ teaching environment, she said. Berger-Sweeney, 56, has three key goals for her first full year running Trinity, cen- tered around greater emphasis on academic quality, and more pupil engagement with the Connecticut business community. "I want to ensure we're focusing on the strength of our academic programs,'' she said. In particular, the president, a neurobi- ologist, pointed to Trinity's engineering pro- gram that is embedded within its liberal-arts school. The unusual pairing of those two dis- ciplines, she said, grounds its engineering pupils with a pragmatic base that enables them to communicate with inventors and innovators. "One of my goals is to strengthen this little jewel,'' she said of Trinity's engineer- ing school. "I want to remind them that we're training exceedingly high-quality engineers.'' But Trinity is foremost a liberal-arts school, and Berger-Sweeney says she wants to help her students embrace the practical- ity of that degree. One way, she said, is to bridge students' classroom instruction with first-hand learning opportunities through internships. Trinity says more than 200 of its interns seed Hartford area businesses, non- profits and state and local agencies. Trinity's connection to the center-city's business community will grow stronger after the school recently bid $2.03 million to acquire 200 Constitution Plaza, giving the school its first downtown Hartford presence. The college head said another goal is get- ting Trinity pupils active as interns earlier in their college careers, perhaps as freshmen and sophomores. Requisite with that, she said, is deciphering interns' transportation needs, since Trinity won't allow first-year pupils to have automobiles on campus. Moreover, Berger-Sweeney says early internships may provide a solution to Con- necticut's brain- and financial-drain from los- ing young college post grads. "If the first internships are here in Hart- ford,'' she said, "the likelihood that we'll keep them here [after graduation] is greatly increased. I'm assuming the sell isn't going to be that hard. It's providing those connections and opportunities.'' Trinity also seeks to offer more graduate and certificate programs, clustered around rapid-growth sectors such as education and health care, she said. The mother of a high-school age daughter and a son, Berger-Sweeney is sensitive to the dimming affordability of a college degree. So she says she is looking for resources to boost financial aid to needy Trinity students. n Brennan takes over just as CBIA enters the first full year of its CT20x17 campaign, seeking to get the Nutmeg State ranked in the top 20 states to do business by 2017. The effort was launched last year, focused on showing policymakers where state govern- ment can shore up its weaknesses and play up its strengths. That message will continue in 2015, Brennan said, focusing on three areas of concern: balancing the state government budget; training the educated workforce of the future; and improving the state's aging infrastructure, including roads, bridges, air- ports, ports, and rail. "That is all part of a large system that needs to be modernized to help business- es," Brennan said. Brennan started at CBIA in 1988 as a staff attorney, five years after moving to Connecticut when his wife, Nancy Bren- nan, took a job at the Southern New Eng- land Telephone Co. He and Nancy have been married 31 years and have two daugh- ters, Julia, 17, and Caroline, 14. Brennan's first task at CBIA was to convince state government to lower its corporate taxes; at the time Connecticut had the highest effective corporate tax rate in the nation. Brennan rose in CBIA's ranks over 26 years to become senior vice president for policy, prior to being named Rathgeber's replacement. "He's absolutely the best candidate and most natural successor to lead CBIA into the future," said Donna Galluzzo, the pres- ident and CEO of Wallingford-based HMS Healthcare Management Solutions, who took over as CBIA chairwoman on Dec. 11. "Joe, who has a strong set of leadership competencies, possesses the knowledge, experience, energy, and vision to hit the ground running and build on the tremen- dous work already started." In addition to working to make Con- necticut a top place to do business, Bren- nan said he will focus on helping CBIA fulfill its potential. With 81 employees and 10,000 member companies, he said the organization must provide strong services and products to its members and the larger Connecticut community. Those services include the well-known legislative lobbying but also health insur- ance and energy purchasing products for smaller businesses. "We look at ourselves as conveners, bringing people together," Brennan said. As CBIA's CEO, Brennan said he plans to be out in the community as much as pos- sible, preaching growth in the Connecticut economy, rather than battling the zero-sum game where one company's gain is another's loss. n while delivering on the bottom line for his publicly traded employer. From 2012 until earlier this year Quick ran Frontier's Pennsylvania operation, which has a lot in common with Connecti- cut, including a similar business model and products and customers. But there are key differences as well, Quick said. Pennsylvania was already an estab- lished market for Frontier when Quick took it over; Connecticut isn't. So there were technical challenges of converting former AT&T systems, all while trying to introduce customers to a new brand with which they are less familiar. Upwards of 10,000 people experienced interrupted phone, Internet or TV service during and after Frontier's switchover in late October, the company said. It amounted to less than 1 percent of the approximately 1 million customers whose data was being switched over, Quick said, but he didn't downplay the mishap. "We find that to be unacceptable," he said. "People want their Internet." Quick doesn't have a typical telecom executive's background. He worked for Hallmark from the mid-1980s to 2008, where he held various management posi- tions, including leading a team that served one of the greeting card maker's biggest customers, Walgreens, and president of the Image Arts division. Frontier's East Region President, Ken Arndt, said Quick's background in the greeting card industry is a plus for the company. "It wasn't your traditional com- munications [background], but he was a leader," Arndt said. "He believes in what he's doing, and it comes across." Quick describes himself as passionate and inquisitive. "I want to know why, how something works, if we can do it better," he said. Quick said he has a number of ways to measure success in the year ahead. The key goals are to grow commercial and residential market share, deliver financial results, be involved with nonprofits, and "delight the customer," which is a phrase Quick uses often. "We will either become the provider of choice or the top-of-mind choice for cus- tomers when they decide that they want to make choices around phone, Internet or tele- vision," he said. Quick chose his phrasing carefully as the company will be competing for market share with competitors including Comcast, Cox, Charter, and Cablevision. Quick said Frontier will compete on price and service. An all U.S. workforce is also a selling point for some customers, he said. Quick said he's heartened by early demand he has witnessed for AT&T's U-Verse triple play offering, which was part of the Frontier acquisition and is now called Frontier TV. "I've been a marketer for a number of companies," he said. "It's a rare situation where a customer says 'when can I have it?' That's a great place to be." Frontier also has more branding to do, Quick said. "When you say 'AT&T,' people know who that is," he said. "When you say 'Fron- tier,' you still have some brand building to do, and we're going to get that done." n expensive nursing homes, which will trim healthcare spending. Bye said she will try to avoid any cuts to municipalities — which keeps property taxes down — and to education. "There will be a lot of conversations this year about equitable funding of our school districts," Bye said. "If we don't address our education issues now, then we won't have a high-quality workforce in the future." The spending negotiations will start after Malloy releases his proposed budget in Feb- ruary. After that, the Appropriations Com- mittee will form several subcommittees on the various spending and revenue areas and make recommendations after public hear- ings; and then Bye, Walker, and other legis- lative leaders will go back and forth with the executive branch until a budget agreement is reached. "When everyone starts off saying we are going to work it out, it will get done," Bye said. Bye's other pet project in 2015 will be her work with the consumer counsel, comptrol- ler, and local officials from around Connecti- cut to bring an ultra-high speed gigabit Inter- net network to the state, in order to assure Connecticut has among the fastest Internet speeds in the country. "It will be like having the first train sta- tion in the 1800s," Bye said. "This would be so big for business … We have a really cool opportunity." n 5 to Watch in 2015

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