Southcoast Health System, a not-for-profit charitable organization, is a community based health delivery system with multiple access points, offering an integrated continuum of advanced health services throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and East Bay, Rhode Island. It includes Southcoast Hospitals Group, formed in 1996 from the merger of Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford and Tobey Hospital in Wareham.
Southcoast has more than 40 ancillary facilities, including the Southcoast Health Van, home health care, hospice and infusion services, numerous outpatient medical services, an assisted living facility and a wellness center. For more information visit www.southcoast.org.
Southcoast is one of three community hospitals approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to perform open heart surgery and primary angioplasty beginning in Spring 2002.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 12, 2007
Southcoast Health System names Christopher Baldwin as Vice President of Information Systems
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. - Southcoast Health System has named Christopher Baldwin as Vice President of Information Systems. He replaces Richard Smith, who recently retired from the position he held for 20 years.
Baldwin brings more than 25 years experience in health care and information technology to Southcoast, most recently as Chief Information Officer at Northeast Health in Troy, N.Y., where he also served as Vice President of MIS, Acute Care Division.
Prior to joining Northeast Health, Baldwin was Director of Information Services and Communications at St. Mary’s Hospital in Amsterdam, N.Y., and Manager of Clinical Systems Development at Albany Medical Center in Albany, N.Y.
He has served as chairman of the board of directors for Health Information Xchange of New York (HIXNY), a non-profit organization whose goal is to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of health care throughout the greater Albany region. Baldwin is past-president of Medical Users Software Exchange (MUSE) International and was chairperson of statewide e-Imaging Technology Committee for the New York State Department of Health.
Baldwin has extensive experience in the consolidation of multi-hospital information technology (IT) platforms and in the oversight and leadership of information services, telecommunications, medical records and clinical engineering.
In his new position, Baldwin will oversee Southcoast’s Management Information Systems (MIS) Department and the implementation of the multi-million dollar electronic records transition that will convert the entire health system from paper to computerized patient files.
An invited speaker at health information technology conferences throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa, he has also authored or co-authored numerous papers, such as “Health IT Through the Lean Lens,” published in Most Wired Online, and “Building a Regional Health Information Organization
(RHIO) in the Capital District of New York State,” published in the New York Health Law Journal.
Baldwin received his Master of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and is a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany.
Baldwin and his wife, Christine, and their two children currently live in Guilderland, NY but are actively planning for a permanent move to the South Coast region.
Southcoast Health System, a not-for-profit charitable organization, is a community based health delivery system with multiple access points, offering an integrated continuum of health services throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and East Bay, Rhode Island. It includes Southcoast Hospitals Group, formed in 1996 from the merger of Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford and Tobey Hospital in Wareham.
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