Day Kimball Healthcare in Putnam and Yale New Haven Health on Friday announced a “Community Partner” relationship that will serve to enhance clinical care at Day Kimball Hospital and expand access to health care providers in northeastern Connecticut.

The announcement was made at the Day Kimball Healthcare Center in Plainfield, where the first evidence of this new partnership — the recent addition of a Yale New Haven Health-affiliated Yale Medicine cardiologist’s office to the health care center — already is in place.

The move further expands Yale New Haven Health’s reach into eastern Connecticut, which began last year when it affiliated with Lawrence + Memorial HealthCare in New London, the network that also includes The Westerly Hospital. It also recently began preliminary talks with South County Hospital in Wakefield, R.I. Yale New Haven Health is Connecticut's largest hospital network.

In a news release, Joseph Adiletta, president and chief executive officer of Day Kimball, said the new relationship is not a merger but a clinical partnership. Adiletta said becoming a Yale New Haven partner is a very positive and progressive step in Day Kimball’s strategy to grow access to high-quality health care in the communities it serves while it remains one of the few independent hospitals and health care systems in the state.

“For more than 122 years Day Kimball’s mission has been to serve the health needs of our community through our core values of clinical quality, customer service, fiscal responsibility and local control,” he said. “Though recent pressures on healthcare in our state and nation have made continuing that mission as an independent community hospital and healthcare system more difficult, we at Day Kimball have remained committed to finding innovative and progressive solutions to overcome those challenges.”

The partnership will allow Day Kimball to preserve and expand access to close care in northeastern Connecticut, he said.

Chris O’Connor, chief operating officer of Yale New Haven Health, said the partnership will be mutually beneficial.

Officials said that the partnership already includes Day Kimball’s participation in Yale New Haven Health’s purchasing network, an arrangement that has been in place for about a year and has allowed Day Kimball to save more than $300,000 through economy of scale in the purchase of materials.

Now that Day Kimball Healthcare has become an official community partner of Yale New Haven Health, the two systems will work together to identify additional opportunities for collaboration, the news release said.

These opportunities are likely to include expanding access to specialty care and other medical providers in northeastern Connecticut by leveraging the services of providers who are part of Yale New Haven’s Northeast Medical Group as well as association with Yale Medicine, the clinical practice of the Yale School of Medicine.

Yale New Haven and Day Kimball also are working to incorporate an eICU clinical service at Day Kimball Hospital, the news release said. This would allow specially trained eICU critical care nurses and physicians at Yale to provide patient monitoring and consulting support to the critical care nurses and physicians at Day Kimball Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit through the use of advanced telemedicine technology.

Ultimately, the integration of this service would mean that patients who are more seriously ill can continue receiving the highest quality care close to home at Day Kimball Hospital instead of having to be transferred to a larger and more distant tertiary care center.

“These are just a few of the services we’re already working to bring to our patients through this new partnership with Yale New Haven,” Adiletta said. “We’re excited about the expansion in access to care this will provide to our region and we’re looking forward to building upon those successes in the future.”

Day Kimball Healthcare is the second organization to become a community partner of Yale New Haven Health. Bristol Hospital became a community partner in 2013.