Abbott Announces Retirement
…But Challenges Still Remain

Even as he announced his impending retirement as President and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare in December, Steve Abbott continued to look ahead.
Mr. Abbott said he planned to remain until the recruiting process for a successor was completed, probably this fall.
In a wide-ranging interview with To Your Good Health, A Healthcare Newsletter, he listed as immediate tasks for the remainder of his tenure:

• Meeting the system’s annual physician recruitment goals, a continuing challenge considering the Cape’s cost of living problems;
• Obtaining approvals for completion of the fourth and fifth floors of Cape Cod Hospital’s new Mugar Center;
• Gaining final approvals and beginning development of the proposed Hadaway Road major outpatient center in Hyannis
• And working with physicians on new insurance plans calling for 100 percent reimbursement under innovative “pay for performance” guidelines. “This idea is still in its infancy,” he explained, “and it will create a new layer of record-keeping.”

As for long-term challenges facing the Cape’s dominant health care delivery system, Mr. Abbott said it was basically “how to remain financially viable in a medium marketplace when you receive fixed financial reimbursements from the federal government and the state.”
He also cited the financial burden of putting doctors on the CCHC payroll as the only way to recruit new physicians, “something we never had to do before.” And also competition from so-called boutique or niche providers who can deliver high-reimbursement services without the requirement of staffing emergency rooms or treating the uninsured or indigent.

Looking back on nine-plus years on the Cape, Mr. Abbott rated his biggest satisfaction as successfully “assembling all the parts and pieces of the new Cape Cod Healthcare system,” which had been formed by the merger of Cape Cod and Falmouth Hospitals and now also includes the Visiting Nurse Association, JML Care Center, the Heritage at Falmouth assisted living center, plus hospice, rehabilitation and psychiatric care components and a network of outpatient facilities throughout the Cape.

In addition to melding all of these previously disparate workforces, there also was the factor of dealing with Cape Cod’s tradition regional provincialism.

In listing advice he might offer his eventual successor, Mr. Abbott of course mentioned the burdens of “a peninsula with the high demands of an aging population.

But he closed by returning to the continuing problem of provincialism. “The new leader has to be aware of the pride all citizens have in each town.” He stressed. “Everybody feels they live in the best town on Cape Cod! In fact, given that provincialism, it’s remarkable that Cape Cod Healthcare even came about.”

Mr. Abbott, 65 in March, said he plans to remain a West Dennis resident after his retirement with his wife Mindy. (Two grown daughters live off Cape.) He will continue to assist his old employer in matters of fund-raising and also do some community work.
Otherwise, he’s planning a typical Cape Cod retirement: woodworking and wood-carving, collecting antique tools. buying a small sailboat, golf and gardening, “getting reacquainted with those New England back roads.”

But mostly, the first-time luxury of “unscheduled time with the freedom to do things spontaneously.”