Page 38 - Healthcare News Sep/Oct 2022

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
HEALTH/WELLNESS ADMINISTRATOR
Mark Paglia
Chief Operating Officer, MiraVista Behavioral Health Center
This COO
Empowers Team
Members and
Leads by Example MBy George O’Brien
ark Paglia was a wrestler at Cathedral High School and later at American International College.
He said the great thing about wrestling is there is “no one-size-fits-all method that leads to success.” But there are several qualities, traits, and habits
that wrestlers possess. “They trust themselves and count on their teams to train together to get better. They aren’t afraid to try new things. They are disciplined, grateful, focused, detailed-oriented, and able to adjust.”
These are qualities, Paglia noted, that positioned him well for
his current role as chief operating officer at MiraVista Behavioral Health Center, and the myriad challenges that have come with that assignment.
While working for Mercy Medical Center and its parent company, Trinity Health Of New England, Paglia served in several different roles, including executive director of Behavioral Health. He would sum up his tenure this way:
“I became the ‘project guy,’ the ‘turn-around guy,’ where I would be asked to go into departments or services that were really struggling both from a regulatory side or the financial side and turn them around,’” he said.
He was given a number of difficult assignments in that vein,
such as leading efforts which led to the successful redesign of the methadone maintenance treatment program, resulting in two-year licensure with the Department of Public Health; leading efforts to open the new Clinical Stabilization Services unit; stabilizing redesign throughput for behavioral-health patients in Mercy’s emergency room; and leading the Outpatient department from a state of uncertainty to being fully licensed and financially viable. Ultimately, he was charged with winding down behavioral-health services at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital when Trinity Health Of New
Leah Martin Photography
“I really find myself leading from behind, where I screen, recruit, and hire exceptional people, identify what the goals of the organization are, invite the individuals to participate, and identify what their passions are — what they believe in — and then empower them to go.”
England made the difficult decision to close them in 2020.
As noted, these experiences, including his wrestling prowess, helped steel him for what has been his most stern career challenge, but also the most rewarding one: opening a new behavioral-health hospital, MiraVista, at the Providence Hospital site in April 2021 — in very little time, in the middle
of a pandemic, in the midst of
a nationwide nursing shortage and general workforce crisis,
and at a time when the need for behavioral-health services was soaring due to COVID and the many ways it impacted people of all ages.
A24 2022
2022 HEALTHCARE HEROES
But his efforts to open MiraVista’s doors under such difficult circumstances and then put
it on a path to accreditation and expansion of both inpatient and outpatient services only partly explains why Paglia has been chosen as a Healthcare Hero for 2022 in the Health/Wellness Administrator category.