Hartford HealthCare (HHC) has opened a new headquarters on Pearl Street in downtown Hartford. The move includes consolidating several Connecticut offices and additional hires. HHC hopes that putting more resources and people under one roof will produce savings it can invest in health care innovations.
One such new venture includes space for the first virtual urgent care clinic from the group as well as digital startup teams. Seven hundred employees will be in the building by early 2023 at 100 Pearl St.
Some of those people will include new hires, said Christine Sniadack-Lopez, Hartford HealthCare’s system director for ambulatory development. The majority of new employees already at the building work at the access center, which offers patient support services.
The next initiative is digital collaboration to improve patient health.
“We’re actually building a center right off the main lobby called Launch, and it’s intentional in how we named that,” she said. “It means we are launching new ideas into the health care industry. Where those meetings had previously been held virtually, we’d love for them to come right here in our systems support office in that new collaborative space.”
In October, Hartford HealthCare began to collaborate with five digital health startups to improve patient care: Bloomlife, CareAdvisors, NourishedRx, Sonavi Labs and Viora Health.
The health care group is planning to reinvest savings on leases in more digital startups, said Sniadack-Lopez.
“By really coming to 100 Pearl St., it allowed us to save quite a bit of money on all these other locations that we had very expensive leases,” she said. “With those savings, we are looking to, you know, see if there's opportunities and reinvesting in some of either startup ideas or community-type work.”
Sniadack-Lopez sees potential at the new headquarters. “Just really coming into this space, and being able to invest in revitalizing the space and offering an environment where we can host collaboration and our teams being together,” she said. “We didn't have that in our previous location.”
