There’s a health facility in CT that’s ‘home for some people’ and a hospital for others. Here’s how.

Hartford Courant – Sunday, February 17, 2025
By Helen I. Bennett

When Christine Lalli needed care for a son who is autistic, she eventually found the Hospital for Special Care in Connecticut and was told to “trust the process.”

So Lalli and her family did just that.

Lalli’s son was an in-patient twice and then participated as an outpatient, and she said she wishes there were “hundreds of these hospitals everywhere.”

She described what her son received there as “caring and loving and kind, they do it with grace.”

“We’re blessed to have Hospital for Special Care in Connecticut,” Lalli said.

The hospital, founded in 1941 in New Britain, is a long-term acute and chronic care facility, one that has grown over the decades to provide the kind of care its patients needed, such as the first in-patient autism unit in Connecticut, which opened about five years ago.

Based on the kind of care the hospital gives, it differs from others in that it does not have an emergency room or an operating room. Instead it focuses on chronic diseases, such as for heart patients; rehabilitation, such as for people with brain and spinal cord injuries; care for people who need ventilators 24 hours a day; newborn and specialty pediatric care, and care for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, among many others.

“Our level of care is to take the sickest of the sick,” said Lynn Ricci, HFSC president and CEO. “We are willing to take the patients that other people are not going to take.”

The credo has stayed with the 236-bed hospital since its founding, when it first served people with tuberculosis and then people with polio, including in iron lungs. Now, it’s one of only two long-term acute-care hospitals in the country that serves both adults and children, Ricci noted. In addition to its in-patients, the hospital does about 55,000 outpatient visits a year, said Ricci, who has announced that she will retire in June. The hospital is expected to name a new president and CEO shortly.

Because of the kind of care the hospital does, there have been patients who have spent many years there, Ricci said, such as those who need a ventilator, and otherwise would have to go out of state for the long-term care, as there “is not another place to go.” Ricci noted the hospital has served patients who have lived there 10 and 20 years.

“We’re a home for some people; we’re a hospital for others,” she said.

The hospital has a staff of about 1,300.

Ricci said the autism unit is a 1-to-1 program, meaning one staff member for each patient. The average stay on the unit is 33 days and it has served patients from 23 states, she said. “It has exceptional outcomes,” she said.

Part of the unit’s expertise is for children and adolescents who have aggression, self-injury, or issues that hurt their ability to be in the community. The $13.6 million unit drew support from then Gov. Dan Malloy and bonding money and donations to help build it.

Lalli, of New Milford, said she believes Dr. Sabooh Mubbashar, who is the medical director of the HFSC Autism Inpatient Unit, is “a genius.”

Lalli said she was told, with regard to her son’s care, “we’re not going to throw a pill at it, we’re going to figure it out.”

“They were not looking to just medicate and keep him quiet,” she said. Lalli said she had done research while working to find the right care for her son, and found HFSC was one of very few hospitals in the country that direct their attention to autism as a primary diagnosis.

“They worked with us,” she said, finding a “really great program and structure and medication regimen that worked for him.”

Now her son “is happy, he’s centered, he’s focused. I am grateful every minute every day.”

Lynn Carbone, clinical manager for behavioral care in the autism unit, said it is the only program like it in the state. She said the work is “very rewarding.”

“They learn skills here that that they can carry over into the classroom,” she said. “We see these changes happening.”

Needing a level of medical care

Dr. William J. Pesce, a senior vice president who is chief medical officer at the hospital and has worked there for 32 years, said “it really is special,” and what makes it so is the care patients receive. He said many of the patients have very “medically complex” diagnoses and “need a high level of care.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, the staff that works here is special,” Pesce said. “It’s truly a family.”

Pesce spoke on a recent day as staff bustled around a care unit, helping children learn to stand, teaching children how to eat, checking ventilators and bending down to smile and talk baby talk to infants who were connected to ventilators but got to be in swings.

Mary Cameron, whose infant son, Javon, is a patient at HSC, said her experience there “has been amazing.”

“The nurses and doctors always communicate with us when we ask questions. Since baby Javon got the tracheostomy I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect,” Cameron said. “I did my research and I understand why my son needed it. I really appreciate the nurses and doctors that have been working with Baby Javon.”

Cameron said she is grateful for the care he is getting and thanks the nurses as she has noticed Javon has been “moving kind of fast – all the things he couldn’t do at” another hospital. “Hospital for Special Care is the right place to be.”

Dr. Nathan Nartey, who is part of the hospital’s medical rehabilitation team, which focuses on health needs such as stroke and other kinds of brain injuries, spinal cord injury and other complex conditions, said part of the motivation of his work is “seeing the outcomes.”

“I like connecting with my patients,” he said. “I love what I do.”

Ricci said that about 85% of the hospital’s patients are served by Medicaid.

“We really just are unique to the people we serve,” she said.

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