At a time when hospitals statewide are cutting services, the new president of St. Joseph Healthcare doesn’t believe the Bangor hospital will need to scale back services to weather the “choppy water” providers are enduring.
Gregory LaFrancois started his new role as president of St. Joseph Healthcare on April 1 after resigning from his previous position as president of Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center last October.
After leaving EMMC, LaFrancois decided to stay in Bangor to maintain his relationships with the region’s health care leaders and legislators. Those connections and knowledge of Maine’s health care system, he said, are necessary to be able to overcome and solve the many challenges the health care industry is facing, from shortages in quality providers to longterm financial strife.
“The way things are going right now in health care, this is a team sport, we can’t be doing this individually,” LaFrancois said. “We’ve got to come together with all the health resources to solve these problems.”
Although St. Joseph isn’t immune to the pressures providers across the country are facing, LaFrancois said he doesn’t anticipate the system discontinuing services to stay afloat. This is a stark difference from many other health care centers across the state that have cut staff and closed departments altogether due to staffing shortages, financial deficits and low patient volume.
However, LaFrancois said he is concerned about President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, which some countries have returned with their own on the U.S. Those tariffs, if enacted, would significantly raise the price on many supplies the hospital relies on every day and aren’t made domestically. In some cases, supplies may be unavailable altogether, LaFrancois said.
“It’s very expensive to deliver care, and as we get more precision medicine and medications that can do so much more than they used to do, it comes with a price tag,” LaFrancois said. “Making all of that available at a price people can afford puts the hospitals in a difficult bind.”
Aside from working with other health care leaders in the region to make St. Joseph Healthcare sustainable, LaFrancois said he also plans to “educate legislators” so they understand how decisions they make could affect health care providers in Maine.
In his new role, LaFrancois said one of his primary goals is to guide St. Joseph through this challenging time for health care and help the hospital prepare for future hardships. While making the system sustainable, LaFrancois said he doesn’t want the hospital’s culture of compassion or the quality of care patients expect to suffer.
“Every hospital is one phone call away from a traumatic event,” LaFrancois said. “It could be that Medicaid doesn’t get funded, or a change in regulation with staffing ratios. We’re susceptible to those pressures like anybody else, but there is a path to sustainability.”
In the coming months and years, LaFrancois said he wants any changes or decisions he makes to be “as far away from the patient as possible,” because he believes providers within the hospital already deliver the best care.
LaFrancois said he chose to join St. Joseph specifically because of the hospital’s excellent care and mission-driven compassion for caring for every patient’s wellbeing instead of only addressing injuries and illnesses. This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the hospital will give out clothing, toiletries and other essentials to patients in need, he said.
“When I joined, it was like Disneyland to walk around and have staff look you in the eye and engage with you, not run away,” LaFrancois said. “You can tell there’s a depth of compassion here.”
Originally from Massachusetts, LaFrancois was in the Army for 20 years, then spent time in health care leadership in Kentucky and North Dakota before coming to Maine in 2016. LaFrancois was the president of Northern Light AR Gould in Presque Isle, then acted as president of Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center for roughly a year and a half.
With his new position at St. Joseph Hospital, LaFrancois also became senior vice president of Covenant Health System, the family of Catholic healthcare organizations of which St. Joseph Healthcare is a member.
