Business Women Awards 2022
Industry Leader Health Care Services Mary Marran, Butler Hospital
Mary Marran, president of Providence-based Butler Hospital, calls herself a problem-solver by nature.
That quality, she says, probably proves useful when you’re in a role as demanding and multifaceted as hers at the nonprofit psychiatric hospital affiliated with the Care New England Health System and Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.
Marran adds that she has “had this really weird career” where she got asked to do “a lot of different things.”
“Although I’ve been at Butler well over 30 years, I’ve had so many different jobs,” she said.
Marran started working at Butler as a student in 1984 and was hired the following year. The future president of the hospital worked there through the 1990s, then spent a year away from the hospital working in outpatient rehabilitation and then returned to working at Butler in a management position.
Marran’s experience includes serving as Butler’s director of admissions for 15 years, and in 2014 she was appointed the associate vice president of patient care services. Marran was named Butler’s president in 2017 after serving as interim president, becoming the second woman to lead the hospital in its history. Currently, she also serves as the interim president and chief operating officer of mental health services provider The Providence Center.
Raina Smith, Care New England’s director of public relations, media relations, communications and government affairs who has worked with Marran for three years, told Providence Business News in an email that Marran is a “steadfast leader who is genuinely respected by staff at Butler Hospital, as well as throughout Care New England Health System” for her vast institutional knowledge of Butler and the field of behavioral health. Smith also lauds Marran for how she treats everyone “with the utmost respect.”
“Mary is quick to recognize a job well done and highlight employees who are streamlining processes or doing what they can to make Butler Hospital a better experience for patients and staff,” Smith said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to pose numerous challenges for health care workers, including those at Butler. The World Health Organization has noted that during the first year of the pandemic, rates of anxiety and depression increased 25% across the globe.
Marran says there’s an extremely high demand for behavioral health services, particularly with children, who the hospital does not treat at Butler, as well as adolescents and young adults. That, she says, is “quite overwhelming.”
“We’re, as a state, struggling with being able to find staff to work in hospitals and community placements in the field. So, it means that people who need care are having trouble getting access to care,” Marran said. “What’s so frightening to me is that this pandemic has increased the demand and the need and depleted our resources for providing it.”
During the height of the pandemic, Marran opened Butler’s Ray Hall Conference Center, providing it with 25 beds to support patients in need when local emergency centers became overwhelmed with patients. In May, Marran testified at the House Oversight Committee in support of reforming Rhode Island’s health care system relating to behavioral health.
Smith said that when she thought about exemplary leadership within the health care space, Marran “immediately came to mind.”
“Mary is a selfless woman, both personally, as well as professionally, and is someone I admire on both fronts. To work with Mary is to be inspired daily,” Smith said.
Marran, in her decades of experience at the hospital, has witnessed Butler evolve throughout the years and has seen the organization through a variety of challenges.
“It’s a sheer pleasure to run the organization. And again, because I didn’t walk in when I was studying to be an [occupational therapist] to ever think about being a hospital president,” Marran said. “But I’ve weirdly ended up in this role and have a fabulous team of folks working with me. And we’re able to do some great things.”