1. NCH taps new medical chief
Hospital also launching oncology program
By Lindsay Pykosz
I&M Staff Writer
April 4, 2013
Nantucket Cottage Hospital announced this week that Dr. Jock Lawrason has
been named chief medical officer and co-director of its emergency
department.
Lawrason brings with him over 30 years of experience, including his most recent post as chairman
of the Department of Medicine at Waterbury Hospital Health Center and chief medical officer of the
Alliance Medical Group in Waterbury, Conn.
There, he began hospitalist (doctors who specialize in the care of patients in hospitals) and stroke
programs in conjunction “I can’t imagine a better fit than Jock for this role as it truly points to our
growth from the inside out,” said Dr. Margot Hartmann, president and CEO of the hospital.
“With this growth in leadership comes increased quality health care here on our island – an
initiative that continues to make leaps and bounds, day-in, day-out.”
Familiar with the island, as he’s been visiting for over 30 years and has owned a home in Sconset
for nearly 15, Lawrason’s new position coincidentally began when he made his first visit to the
hospital during a trip last summer to see if there were any positions available. It was then that he
met Hartmann.
“I was out here in the beginning of the summer relaxing, and thought I should go to the hospital
here to see what’s available. That was the first time I met Margot. She said, ‘well what do you do?’
And I said that I have done administration recently, I do internal medicine, pulmonary and critical-
care medicine. She asked me if I would be interested in relocating here, and I said I would love to
because we’ve loved the island for a long time.”
Lawrason moved to the island with his wife Lee, a nurse, and their daughter Phoebe, who attends
Cyrus Peirce Middle School.
A studio art and creative writing major at an Ohio college, Lawrason ended up pursuing geology, a
scientific interest, and attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. After the two
sedimentologists he was working with relocated to Kansas, Lawrason had a decision to make: go
with them or go to medical school.

2. “I ended up going to a place called Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, graduated and did
internal medicine through Yale. I had a private practice for five years in a small town much like
Nantucket and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I decided I wanted to get back to teaching and more
academic medicine. I left my practice and went to Dartmouth and did pulmonary critical-care
medicine. After that, I came back to Waterbury Hospital and gradually became the director of ICU,
chair of the Department of Medicine and then chief medical officer.”
Before Lawrason left Waterbury, the hospital where he worked was taken over by a nonprofit that
eventually cut costs and eliminated programs, he said. One program in particular was an internal-
medicine teaching program of which he was an associate clinical professor, which prompted him to
leave.
Since beginning at the hospital, Lawrason has filled spots in the emergency department and has
become co-director of the department with Dr. Tim Lepore. He will be consulting on the medical-
surgical floor, seeing patients in physician-specialty clinics and will work to determine the best
options for designing a hospitalist program, something he started at his previous hospital that
expanded from three hospitalists to 13, plus two teaching assistants.
“It’s a physician who has specific training in taking care of hospitalized patients,” Lawrason said.
“In the past, a private physician would see patients in the hospital between 7:30-8:30 in the morning
and spend about 15 minutes with each patient then go to their office. What a hospitalist does is stay
in the hospital. They’re always available. They may see a patient two times a day and they’re
always available if something comes up or if something happens. It doesn’t really work unless the
primary care physician is in direct contact with the hospitalist. It has to be a team effort.”
The hospitalist program at NCH would be a scaled-down version of the one Lawrason is familiar
with, and would most likely be a hybrid model with a couple of full-time physicians who are used to
taking care of hospitalized patients with the help of primary-care doctors, he added.
Moving forward, his other tasks will include clinical documentation and coding, case management,
performance improvement and peer review across all departments.
“I’m going to be doing reviews of patient care, looking at efficiencies, looking at quality issues and
making sure quality of care is present in the institution, both in the ER and on the floors,” Lawrason
continued.“I’ll be working with the physicians to make sure that everybody is up to speed with
current regulations from JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation, Health Care, Certification)
and all payers.”
Looking to the future, Lawrason said he hopes to implement his own specialty: pulmonary
medicine, saying he’d like to start doing pulmonaryfunction tests and bronchoscopies, a fiber-optic
procedure that includes putting a scope inside people’s lungs to biopsy for certain cancers, sample
areas of infection and detect different kinds of bacteria.
“I’m looking forward to the hospitalist program, helping Tim with directing of the emergency
department and helping physicians with credentialing,” Lawrason said. “I’m going to start an
educational process with physicians with case conferences, morbidity and mortality review, things
like that.”
In other hospital news, beginning next month, NCH will offer new oncology and hematology-
related services though Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cancer Center (MGHCC).

3. According to a statement released by Hartmann,“This new agreement reflects NCH’s goal to
maximize the number of services offered on Nantucket while simultaneously increasing the island’s
access to one of the best cancer treatments in the United States.”
The partnership between MGH’s oncology team and those from NCH – including registered nurse
Jane Kelly, RN – will provide a better range of services for patients. More details will be released in
the coming weeks, Hartmann said.
In addition, NCH will host a forum Saturday to discuss questions and concerns regarding childhood
immunizations.A panel of experts will include primary- care physicians from the island, two
pediatricians – including a specialist from MGH – and Hartmann, who will discuss some reasons
why immunization rates on-island are lower than those of similarly- sized communities off-island.
The forum will be held from 11 a.m.-noon in Nantucket High School’s Large Group Instruction
room, 10 Surfside Road.