Dr. Cristina Pacheco was recently named CEO of Blackstone Valley Community Health Care. She steps into the role after serving as the organization’s chief medical officer. Pacheco spoke with Providence Business News about her new position.
PBN: What made you want to take on the role of CEO?
PACHECO: I joined Blackstone in 2013 without a thought about being in leadership, but over the course of my time here I realized I have a strong sense of how BVCHC can better serve the health care needs of the community, and how to best work together with patients and staff to make that happen. We have some of the most vulnerable patients in R.I., but also some of the most dedicated staff. There is so much good to be done.
PBN: How are you approaching your new role differently from serving as chief medical officer? How are the positions similar?
PACHECO: I loved being CMO, providing guidance to clinical staff and setting clinical policy for the organization. But being CEO allows me to enact some of the changes I saw [that were] needed to improve our patients' health, like more outreach in the community and shifting the mindset of the entire organization to center patients and patient care. Both positions are strategic, and having been CMO really informs how I look at business decisions, understanding the implications to front-line staff and patients.
PBN: What are your main goals as CEO?
PACHECO: Our vision at Blackstone is to be the health care provider of choice and the employer of choice in the Pawtucket and Central Falls communities. As such: First goal is community outreach, listening to what the community needs and figure out how Blackstone can meet that.
Second goal is growth – there is a dearth of primary care in R.I., and we are building an employee-friendly organization to help ensure the staff we hire will want to stay, yet remaining budget conscious to ensure we can weather the various financial storms in health care.
Third goal – partner with centers of learning to ensure we have the best trained staff and an active pipeline of new graduates to hire. This includes everyone from health information and billing and coding specialists to nurses, physicians and allied health professionals in training.
PBN: What do you hope to accomplish in the next year?
PACHECO: My first goal for year one was to build a mission-driven senior leadership team who can foster a healthy-growth mindset/servant leader culture throughout the organization. This goal has been achieved.
Next it will be important to hire and retain staff who understand and are committed to our community – this goal is well underway.
Thirdly, we need to work together to understand the challenges Blackstone faces, especially with regard to the Accountable Entity program, as well as the 340B program.
Last but not least, I have begun outreach to various community leaders, including the mayors of Central Falls and Pawtucket, to begin to understand the community needs and establish collaborative relationships.
PBN: What are some unique health care challenges you’ve noticed in the Blackstone Valley community and how do you address them?
PACHECO: Many of the challenges Blackstone faces are mirrored in our sister FQHCs [federally qualified health centers] in R.I., especially decreasing returns with the 340B Pharmacy program and the Accountable Entity.
Blackstone is unique in having such a high preponderance of immigrants and non-English-speaking patients, many of whom do not read in their native language. Pawtucket has one of the largest populations of Cape Verdeans in the United States, and finding interpretation can be a challenge, complicated by the fact that Cape Verdean Creole is not a written language.
The vast majority of our patient-facing staff are at least bilingual in Spanish, Portuguese, or Cape Verdean Creole, we employ a CV Creole interpreter, and we have robust remote interpretation services. Our staff is also well trained in handling issues around immigration and issues [that] undocumented patients face.
Katie Castellani is a PBN staff writer. You may contact her at Castellani@PBN.com.
