Large healthcare systems are eager to gobble up thriving pediatric primary care practices like Pioneer Valley Pediatrics, which has offices in Enfield, CT and Longmeadow, MA. Pediatrician Dena Hoberman, MD, FAAP and her colleagues have always resisted offers, choosing instead to stay independent.
“We have been approached many times through the years to join a larger conglomerate, but we knew that as a group that path forward was just not going to be a good fit for us,” Dr. Hoberman says. “We have taken care of our families for generations in northern Connecticut and western Massachusetts with an approach that takes into account the community that we serve specifically.”
But independence comes with its own set of challenges. “While for many years we were able to be one step ahead of the curve, it certainly has been becoming more and more difficult to keep up,” Dr. Hoberman says.
That’s why, when Connecticut Children’s formed its Care Network—a clinically integrated network that links community pediatricians with Connecticut Children’s pediatric subspecialists, with a goal of improving pediatric care—Dr. Hoberman and her colleagues immediately got on board.
“When the opportunity arose to help develop a clinically integrated network with like-minded pediatricians with the support of Connecticut Children’s, we jumped on it,” she says.
Better and Stronger Together
Becoming part of the Care Network has strengthened the practice’s business and enabled the Pioneer Valley Pediatrics team to form new regional connections. “This is a way to have the best of both worlds,” Dr. Hoberman says. “We are stronger together by contracting with other pediatric groups that inherently have the same interests as we do, by nature of doing the same thing in other communities peppered around the state. We are stronger together in sharing information on trends within our communities and being governed by the very pediatricians who are doing the work in the community, not by some administrators in a remote office in another part of the country.”
Supporting Growth and Innovation
“Having the support to implement projects, such as our wildly successful outdoor drive-up flu clinics in the late summer/early fall of 2020 has been a huge benefit,” Dr. Hoberman says. “We were able to connect with other practices to brainstorm ideas and information on what worked and what could have been better in a way that could never have been accomplished without this infrastructure. This project validated all of the work we had put in to making this network a priority for us, for the benefit of children and families.”
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