After years of scrutiny, new leadership says CT hospital ‘is back’

Hartford Courant – Sunday, August 9, 2026
By Livi Stanford

Facing scrutiny from the state Department of Public Health over the last two years for inadequate staffing, patient safety issues, three patient deaths and failure to comply with state and federal regulations, new leadership at Saint Francis Hospital said while there is still work ahead, they are making substantial changes at the Trinity Health of New England hospital.

Dr. Robert Roose, president of acute care at Trinity Health of New England, who oversees Saint Francis and other Trinity Health hospitals, and Dr. Steven Hanks, CEO and president of the not-for-profit Catholic health system in New England and New York, recently gave a tour of the hospital to Sen. Saud Anwar, a physician and co-chair of the state’s Public Health Committee, who has shared concerns about the state of the hospital over the last year.

The tour included the hospital’s maternity unit, which U.S. News & World Report named a high-performing hospital for maternity care this year, the Karl J. Krapek, Sr. Comprehensive Women’s Health Center, which is focused on disease prevention and risk assessments, and a preview of a new MRI system, which staff say can read brain scans in less than 10 minutes.

Roose and Hanks said they were focusing on changing the culture of the hospital, rebuilding trust with staff, monitoring staffing levels, hiring staff to fill in the gaps, bringing back the ability of patients to order their food instead of receiving a standardized meal, and investing in the hospital through projects such as the renovation of the hospital’s pharmacy.

One area hospital leadership have focused on is filling in the gaps in radiology after more than 40 radiologists from Advanced Imaging Specialists left Saint Francis Hospital on March 20 after the group sued the hospital for mismanagement and lack of equipment.

Dr. Joseph Fonte, chair of radiology at the hospital, said he had already hired 22 radiologists, with 25 to 30 needed to fully staff the hospital.

The tour of the 617-bed hospital, the largest Catholic hospital in New England, comes at a time when the state Department of Health continues to require changes at the facility.

In a consent order issued last month, DPH required the hospital to hire an independent expert consultant to review the hospital’s operations.

The health agency says it remains concerned that prior remediation efforts have not resulted in the hospital’s compliance with state and federal regulations even while doubling the weekly hours of the independent monitor, who was put in place in 2024 to provide additional oversight to the hospital. DPH said the hospital has “consistently failed” to implement the independent monitor’s recommendations.

DPH did not return questions for comment in time for publication on whether the hospital has ample staffing and a plan moving forward to comply with state and federal regulations.

As part of the consent order, DPH is requiring that the independent consultant implement what is known as a “gap assessment” to conduct an evaluation of the leadership structure of the hospital, including an analysis of staffing and the ability of the hospital to effectively identify problems while implementing corrective action, according to the consent order.

Hanks said the independent expert consultant is working with the hospital on the “gap assessment” and expects to have it by the end of the month.

Previous ‘culture of fear’

In response to questions from Anwar, Roose and Hanks addressed challenges in the hospital from what they described as a previous culture of fear among staff for speaking up on inadequacies, as well as staffing challenges and faith that Trinity Health of New England will invest in the hospital.

“You need effective leadership to retain people,” said Hanks. “And I think we suffered there a little bit for some time.”

Hanks said when he arrived in the spring, staff were fearful about reporting incidents into the hospital’s incident reporting system.

“If people are fearful and not speaking up, you don’t know where your problems are and you can’t dedicate your resources to the right spot,” he said.

Hanks said increased reporting is important because it’s “an internal correction” and that there are opportunities to learn.

Roose added, “What we want out of a healthy culture is people identifying these things long before they present any risk to a patient or reach a patient.”

Roose said the hospital put up QR codes in various locations so if something happens or an area needs to be cleaned, staff can just take a picture of it and it automatically sends it to the team to address it.

Anwar said he believed the leadership was trying to address all the issues but that it would take time.

“My sense is that they seem to know what needs to be done,” he told the Courant after the tour. “I think Trinity needs to make major investments within the institution and they need more physician and specialty services

In the same measure, Anwar said that staffing remains an issue and that the hospital is trying to recruit as fast as it can.

Roose said staffing is in a better place than previously reported. He said there is a dashboard he views every day that shows staffing at every level of the hospital and whether it is meeting nurse to patient ratios in the hospital staffing plan. He said the hospital is looking to retain employees.

Hanks said, “when you had the cultural issues, as I was describing, you could understand how staff might question their ongoing commitment to the organization.

“We’re turning that around,” he said. “In one month, there was a nearly 40% increase in event reporting under Rob’s leadership. Now we need to rebuild the quality infrastructure.”

Maternal care

As the tour reached the entrance of the maternity unit, pasted with photos of babies, Roose recalled why he got into the field of medicine.

“I got into medicine because my mother was a labor and delivery nurse,” he said. “She was the caregiver I saw who inspired me to go into medicine. She was selflessly dedicated to her patients and she was often in these moments of joy. And then she had a personal experience where she had a pregnancy loss and actually created support groups for women and families that had pregnancy loss.”

Kelley Reddington, the perinatal safety nurse in the maternity unit, said this year the hospital opened a new obstetric emergency department within the maternity unit.

“Pregnant women get funneled into the emergency department and they are overwhelmed with all sorts of things so the expertise isn’t necessarily there to understand all the potential complications ahead,” he said.

Anwar said he had not heard of other hospitals opening such an emergency department, specifically for pregnant women.

Reddington said the hospital’s maternity unit also reduced its C-section rate from 34 to 29 over three years, which she said is significant given the number of high-risk patients the hospital serves.

“But in doing so we didn’t increase our newborn complication rate,” she said. “That rate stayed extremely rare.”

The low C-section rate at the hospital and its low newborn complication rate earned the hospital a high-performing hospital designation in maternity care from U.S News & World Report. The publication said that “23.9% to 27% of first-time, low-risk pregnancies at full term were delivered by cesarean section” at the hospital while newborn complications are rare. The state average for C-sections was 35.8% in 2024, according to CDC data.

MRI suite

Entering the new MRI suite, which is still under construction, Roose said just last week the hospital employed a big crane to lower in a brand new MRI as part of a push to enhance MRI services at the hospital.

“This is one of the things we are actually worried about with issues in the Strait of Hormuz with helium supplies,” Hanks said, explaining that liquid helium is a big part of cooling magnets used in MRI machines.

The Associated Press reported that since the “Iran war began in late February, global helium supply has been disrupted and prices have gone up substantially.”

Roose said the new technology “will allow us to do some additional types of imaging for certain conditions.”

He said the space in the MRI suite would also be redesigned. One of the project design and construction leaders described how they were working to create a more tranquil and relaxing space at a time when a patient may be anxious.

Fonte said the new MRI will improve image quality and shorten patient time in the machine.

“The resolution of the scanner is also much higher, which allows us to do other imaging that requires time-involved events, like for vascular studies, for example, and cardiac imaging,” he said. “It really enables us to do things that we couldn’t do here before.”

Anwar asked Fonte how the hospital is rebuilding after 40 radiologists left.

“I built practices before,” Fonte replied. “It’s something I have done in the past. I oversaw eight hospitals and three imaging centers in Massachusetts, and I recruited a lot of my staff here.”

And also “I worked with the team before I even came aboard to help them shape and lead the group so they divert more subspecialized imaging to the right radiologists and create a workflow for those radiologists, so it isn’t haphazard,” he said.

Investments needed for the hospital

Leaving the MRI suite, Anwar said, “What we have seen is a trend in the last few years of the hospital being a shell of an administration” with ER doctors, radiologists and anesthesiologists contracted out.”

In response, Roose said the investments in radiologists is an example of “us fully investing in a team that’s going to be delivering care for Trinity Health of New England radiology for years to come as an employee model.”

Asked about investment in the hospital amid low Medicaid reimbursement rates that are undermining hospital solvency, Roose said over $6 million has been invested in the hospital over the last few months. He said he expects the parent company to invest tens of millions of dollars every year over the course of the next several years.

Hanks said the allocations to hospitals within the Trinity Health system are increasing every year with this year’s going up 11.1% and that his acceptance of the new position at Trinity Health of New England was contingent upon investment in the hospital.

“Because I said if all you are looking for is to sell the asset, you don’t need me,” he said.

Women’s Health Center

Dr. Christina Metcalf, division director of breast surgery at the hospital, showed Anwar a new surgical navigation system that hospital officials said in a release “reduces pain and increases accuracy during breast cancer surgery.”

The hospital release said the advanced technology allows physicians to “implant” soft tissue markers at the time of the breast biopsy or any time prior to surgery.

The navigation system allows surgeons to reach “their target safely without disrupting healthy tissue.”

“We can be precise and make sure we are getting good margins around the region” of the breast, Metcalf said of the navigation system.

Metcalf said it was important for women beginning at age 40 to get a mammogram every year.

“We are seeing younger and younger patients in their 30s with advanced cancers,” she said.

As the tour ended, Roose spoke to the hospital’s progress, saying that it had the lowest level of staff turnover in the last couple of months.

“Saint Francis is back,” he said. “It’s on its journey. It is a place that I want to be part of that journey. We are not there yet but it’s a place that I want to be part of. The things that we are most proud of in our life are the things that were the hardest to get through.”

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