Brad Chapman, the new president of Memorial Hospital in North Conway, says the hospital is doing well and growing. It is also solidifying its connection to the MaineHealth system it joined over a decade ago.

Chapman, who took over as president in January, sat down with SUN-TV on Tuesday, July 30, to talk about recent changes, including the rebranding of the hospital with a new name and logo.

As of today, the North Conway hospital will be known as MaineHealth Memorial Hospital. It joins the other 11 MaineHealth health care locations, as well as practices like orthopedics, to add MaineHealth to their names.

Chapman said the rebranding will make things less confusing for patients and help grow a stronger sense of community among staff.

“Right now, MaineHealth is made up of 12 really local health systems, and it can be a little confusing for patients if they’re seen at Memorial, and they’re transferred to Maine Medical Center or another MaineHealth facility,” he said.

With the rebranding, he said, “If a patient were to be here at Memorial and transferred to Maine Medical Center, the MaineHealth brand is there and allows our patients to understand we’re in a familiar place we’re still part of Maine Health, which is important. We’ve got consistent medical records.”

Chapman said teaming up with MaineHealth gives Memorial opportunities that it wouldn’t have if it were independent — financial savings, educational opportunities, expertise in medical specialties and support for new programs.

Originally from upstate New York, Chapman attended Niagara University in Buffalo, earning degrees in accounting and business administration. He worked in health care in New York before moving to Pennsylvania, where he spent nearly seven years as a president of a critical access hospital similar to Memorial Hospital.

“I worked for behavioral health hospitals, I worked for a little bit larger hospitals, 164-bed hospitals, then, most recently, 25-bed critical access hospitals that have nursing homes attached to them, much like Memorial does with Merriman House, a 45-bed nursing home,” he said.

Chapman replaced Jill Berry Bowen, who served as interim president from June 2023 to January 2024. She was hired after Art Mathisen left after serving as president from 2019 and leading the hospital throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chapman said the sense of community and the support of MaineHealth during the COVID pandemic were two factors that drew him to Memorial.

“It was really the people here,” he said.

“Andy Moeller, who’s the (MaineHealth) system CEO, had mentioned how the organization had taken care of our people during COVID, that was important to me.”

“So, we’re in a great position at a time when a lot of rural hospitals are still struggling ... We’re certainly in growth mode, and we’re going full force ahead.”

“The hospital’s doing well, financially growing revenues,” Chapman said. “And when you are in that position, you’re able to reinvest in the facility. One thing we just added was a new CT scanner.”

The hospital is in the middle of a five-year strategic plan.

“We also have local priorities we’re working on, that are important for us over the next 12 to 18 months that we have to achieve, one of them being primary care access,” Chapman said. “I think that is extremely important. We continue to work on that.”

He said primary care at the hospital has openings for new patients and offers same-day access to providers.

“We’ve expanded the care team to include physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners,” he said. “And we’ve graduated a medical assistant program.”

Among changes over the past year is increasing the behavioral health and addiction help, two areas where there has been a growing recognition of need since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Another area Chapman is looking to improve is the operating room. He said, “We really want to be able to increase access to get patients in whether they need to see orthopedics or surgery, being able to get patients seen a little bit quicker.”

An issue for many hospitals in recent years has been staffing. Chapman said that problem has leveled out for Memorial, which has 500 employees and less need for temporary staff these days, due in part to programs developed in partnership with White Mountains Community College.

“We haven’t had a big challenge recruiting medical staff to this area, because again, the area sells itself. It’s just a wonderful community. I haven’t seen many like it.”

Chapman said, “Another thing we’ve done is we focused so much on the employees and reducing burnout, our turnover is less than 10%, which is incredible.

We’re seeing it as high as 21-24% in the industry. So, we’ve done a really good job retaining our workforce.”

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