Borgstrom named president/CEO of Yale-New Haven

Since she joined Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) in 1979 as an administrative fellow just out of graduate school, Marna P. Borgstrom, M.P.H., has risen in the ranks to become a vice president, the chief operating officer and, as of October 1, the CEO and president of the hospital and Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS). She succeeds Joseph A. Zaccagnino, M.P.H., who retired in September after a 35-year career.

During more than a quarter-century at the hospital she has watched it grow into the 944-bed flagship of a health system that stretches along Long Island Sound from Rye, N.Y., to Westerly, R.I.

As the second-in-command at the hospital, Borgstrom helped develop YNHHS, an affiliation of several dozen organizations including YNHH and two other large hospitals, Bridgeport and Greenwich. She managed the hospital’s $850 million budget and served as primary liaison with the School of Medicine, and also oversaw construction of the $156 million Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, which opened in 1993.

Because of YNHHS’s size and scope, Borgstrom sees opportunities to create better health care by coordinating its provider networks with one another and with the medical school. In particular, she looks forward to the construction of a $440 million cancer center that is awaiting zoning approval by New Haven officials.

Many joint programs—in epilepsy, endocrine surgery and maternal-fetal medicine, to name a few—already bring patients to New Haven from across the country, and a new liver transplantation program (see “Liver Transplantation Program Formed With an International Team of Experts”) is expected to draw pediatric patients from the region and beyond. Borgstrom would like to see more out-of-state patients come to the city for care, and to see continued growth in YNHHS’s list of nationally recognized programs.