Claire Seguin is stepping into her first summer leading the largest provider of healthcare for Martha’s Vineyard. As new president and chief operating officer, she’s been the face of the hospital for the past six months.
She took over the position just before the Island was rocked by winter storms that downed trees and blocked people into their homes, and when the weather warmed, she has seen a staggering increase in hospital visits for one of the busiest and hottest summers in recent memory. In other words, Seguin, nurses, physicians, lab technicians, and hospital administrators have been busy.
Seguin started on the first day of 2026, after predecessor Denise Schepici retired in 2025. Since that first day in January, the Island community and the hospital have faced new and rising challenges in public health. Last Monday, The Times toured the hospital with Seguin to see what has changed, what has remained, and what values Seguin is carrying into the future of the main provider of primary care and specialty services on the Island.
In the well-lit halls that weave through Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s large campus in Oak Bluffs, there’s an emergency department, a new Express Care & Tick Clinic, a maternity ward for budding parents, the primary local laboratory for tests, inpatient care, and primary care offices. The walls are decorated with curated art pieces from local and international painters, photographers, and sculptors; all works were collected by Chilmark couple Edward Miller and Monina von Opel, along with hospital administrators, over a decade ago.
A lot has happened on the Vineyard in the time Seguin has been heading up operations at the hospital. Most immediately, the Island community is reeling from the Fourth of July weekend, which featured a scorching heat wave as well as summer storms in the following days.
Seguin told The Times in an email on Tuesday that more than 300 patients were seen this holiday weekend in the emergency department. Of that total, 32 cases were tick-related, and more than 50 cases were for dehydration, intoxication, shortness of breath, and other health issues that Seguin said were likely exacerbated by the heat.
Tick-borne conditions have recently attracted national attention, filling the gray-blue chairs in the emergency room with panicked faces and prompting new centers, like the Express Care & Tick Clinic, to meet the increased demand.
“All along, even through COVID, and now with alpha-gal [an allergy to mammalian products from the bite of a lone star tick], you can see that the hospital plays such a vital role in the community,” Seguin told The Times. Seguin was on the forefront of local health efforts to stop the spread of COVID when a nationwide shutdown began in March 2020.
In the years since Seguin started working at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital as chief nurse officer in 2019, outpatient visits from ambulance rides have surged. Many of those visits this year are tick-related.
In the background of glaring health issues, echoes from changes to the state health insurance marketplace have continued to ripple out, along with a seeming uptick in mental health crises in the local community. Islanders are more frequently forgoing insurance due to high costs.
Additionally, the hospital relies heavily on commuter nurses and doctors due to an on-Island workplace housing shortage. All of these factors make Martha’s Vineyard Hospital a cross-section of some of the larger issues the Vineyard community is facing. And reliance on the hospital among locals and seasonal visitors is rising alongside these issues, even as new healthcare centers pop up and the hospital integrates new services.
Seguin said the hospital’s partnership with Mass General Brigham, an integrated healthcare system with headquarters in Boston, has helped it meet the needs of the public as health concerns, such as tick-borne conditions, have skyrocketed.
“Some of these services would be out of our reach, but having that expertise that we can tap into, either remotely through telehealth or in person … I think it has greatly improved the life and quality of life for Islanders, and we’ll continue,” Seguin said. “We want to keep that flexibility to respond to the community demand around some of these significant health issues, while also having that slow drumbeat to make sure we can provide all the things that we need.”
With a background in nursing, Seguin is no stranger to the flexibility necessary in the health field. “This will be my third decade working in healthcare, and then at least two decades in executive leadership,” Seguin said. Her experience as a nurse was primarily in the oncology department at Mass General Brigham.
After attaining an advanced degree as a nurse practitioner, Seguin moved into frontline nursing management at Mass General Brigham. “That is one of the hardest and most rewarding jobs in healthcare … It’s very humbling,” Seguin said of the experience. She added that it “also shaped who I am.”
Seguin said she’s now accustomed to the decisiveness and team communication that her role as a frontline nurse manager required, and those qualities were a part of her pull toward executive work in hospitals. She was asked by Mass General Brigham to be in a quality leadership role, and eventually associate chief of quality at that hospital.
Seguin also has worked as a chief nursing officer at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, and she travels off-Island to be a clinical lecturer at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions and Northeastern University.
“Some of the principles that you learn as a quality leader are: Plan, do, study, act. Don’t just rest on your laurels and say, ‘This is how we do it,’ and stop there. We want to take more input. Is that working? If it’s not, let’s adjust. And I would say that very much plays into the type of leader that I am,” Seguin told The Times.
And the past six months have been an adjustment. One of the challenges facing the hospital is a lack of physicians who live and work on the Island. In the “2025 Community Health Needs Assessment” that the hospital authored after collecting data with Island Health Care, a federally qualified health center in Edgartown, Dukes County was flagged as an area with a shortage of health professionals, meaning there are not enough primary care, dental, and specialist providers for the population. The Island community was found to have one primary care provider for every 1,740 people. The state average is one provider to 970 people.
Commuting and telehealth, and a push to build more workplace housing, have made a dent, but the shortage remains.
“That is one of the biggest challenges, and also, even though we’ve made this big dent on housing, I’m going to be honest, there’s not a single recruitment conversation that doesn’t involve something about housing here on the Island,” Seguin said.
The need for creative solutions to meet the increased strain of housing and affordability on the Vineyard is near-constant, but the hospital has made various efforts. The hospital teamed up with Island Housing Trust, an affordable housing development nonprofit, to build Hanover House at a former inn in Tisbury. The structure has 16 units that house hospital staff. There are also rental homes across the Island that are contracted for commuter nurses and doctors, and single-family homes for staff at the Navigator Homes campus in Edgartown, a sprawling elderly care facility.
The fact that the hospital is on an Island lends its own complications. Transportation to and from the Vineyard aboard Steamship Authority ferries through ocean waters or emergency MedFlight helicopters that soar through the sky is an already dramatic, costly, and time-consuming addition to a health crisis. Seguin said that makes bolstering care on the Island all the more important. “I want to make this the best place to work, so that people come here, love it here, and want to stay here,” she said.
It’s not all an uphill battle, however. The Island community, Seguin said, is what keeps the wheels turning despite the roadblocks.
When asked to be the chief nursing officer at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Seguin said, “I came and just fell in love with the hospital. I fell in love with the community. My husband likes it here. We have a dog. Our kids come back all the time. It just seemed like a great fit.”
In her free time, Seguin prefers to be outside. One of her hobbies is birdwatching on Island trails and taking Tilly, her red-haired Australian Labradoodle, to the beach in Vineyard Haven.
My partner has just experienced emergency care and a subsequent two-week stay at our Hospital. We are so grateful for everyone there! The care was beyond excellent — and so was the food! Everyone was very kind, and reassuring. They have increased, if possible, our admiration for all the hard workers at the Hospital. There was never a negative attitude expressed on any level. Kudos to every hard working person at MVH. We are lucky to have you!