The Boston Globe reported on Thursday, June 27, 2002, in New England in Brief that “Trustees at the state medical school’s troubled academic hospital system yesterday tapped Cambridge Health Alliance chief executive officer John G. O’Brien as its new CEO, calling the longtime public-health advocate an ideal choice to lead UMass Memorial Healthcare medical center out of the administrative turmoil that followed its creation in a 1998 merger. The previous CEO at the Worcester medical center, Dr. Arthur Russo, stepped down last November amid operating deficits and tension between academic and clinical priorities at the teaching hospitals of the state’s only public medical school.”

In an earlier Boston Globe article by Liz Kowalczyk it was reported that “The hospital lost $49 million on operations during fiscal year 2000, leading the hospital to hire the Hunter Group and lay off several hundred employees. Operations so far this year have improved and the organization is logging a small profit.”