Cooley Dickinson Sets Goals at Annual Meeting

NORTHAMPTON — More than 140 people attended the 130th annual meeting of the Cooley Dickinson board of trustees on Oct. 24. The meeting was an opportunity for Cooley Dickinson board members, volunteers, medical staff, employees, donors, and other friends of Cooley Dickinson to celebrate the people and accomplishments of the past year, and to look ahead.

Cooley Dickinson Health Care President and CEO Joanne Marqusee highlighted the important work of her first two years leading the organization, noting that those initiatives have established a foundation for the organization’s five-year strategic plan, including implementing Cooley Dickinson’s affiliation with Mass General Hospital, hiring a new executive leadership team, creating a culture of safety and respect, continuing to foster collaborative relationships with the Cooley Dickinson medical staff; and investing in services outside the hospital that support the needs of the community.

“Based on my two and a half years at Cooley Dickinson, I firmly believe we have the foundation to create a world-class community health system,” Marqusee said. “I am confident we have the key ingredients that will allow us to go from good to great: the excellence of our employees, providers, and clinicians; a strong community culture; and the affiliation with Mass General. We take so much pride in working as a team to deliver the best clinical care that typically one seeks in a major urban center with the personalized, humanistic touch that a community-based system is best poised to provide.”

Looking to 2017 and beyond, Marqusee outlined three essential elements that define the care Cooley Dickinson Health Care wants to provide to the community. These include excellence: Cooley Dickinson’s commitment to deliver the highest quality and safest care; experience: Cooley Dickinson’s commitment to respond to patient needs through the delivery of personalized care with a human touch; and engagement: Cooley Dickinson’s commitment to a close collaboration with its providers, employees, patients, and communities.

“It is critical to our success as healthcare system that we listen to what the community needs and to develop programs to meet those needs, if and when it is appropriate to do so,” Marqusee said.

In the coming year, those programs include a new, comprehensive Breast Center, opening in 2017; Cooley Dickinson Urgent Care, based inside the hospital, which opened in early October 2016; partnering with the community in the areas of opioid prevention and treatment; offering better and expanded services for the LGBTQ community; and expanding integrative therapies for people being cared for by providers at the Mass General Cancer Center at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.