- Merger the latest shift in Central Mass. health care world (July 2025)
excerpt: PUBLIC HEALTH regulators approved the merger of UMass Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC) and Marlborough Hospital on Wednesday, with the licensing overhaul deepening an existing affiliation that’s expected to improve patient care and reduce operating costs. The UMass Memorial Health system encompasses UMMMC, an academic medical center, and four community hospitals, including the 79-bed Marlborough Hospital. All hospitals in the system are licensed independently, and Marlborough Hospital is the smallest of the facilities, said Dennis Renaud, director of the Determination of Need program at the Department of Public Health. The Public Health Council approved UMass Memorial Health’s DoN application for a transfer of ownership, allowing Marlborough Hospital to become a licensed campus of UMMMC. Marlborough Hospital, while formerly owned by a different nonprofit, has already been affiliated with UMass Memorial for more than two decades, according to a filing with the Health Policy Commission. UMass Memorial said the merger will allow Marlborough Hospital to improve access to specialty services, plus eliminate costs tied to maintaining separate hospital licenses, governing bodies and staffing infrastructure. “The applicant states that, due to its small size, Marlborough Hospital does not have sufficient inpatient volume to independently support a full array of hospital and specialty service lines needed by the community,” Renaud told the council. “Consequently, patient access to services at Marlborough Hospital are impacted by the ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining primary care and specialty care physicians needed to support an acute care hospital in the community.” Those factors have led to heightened on-call demand for physicians, Renaud said. Marlborough Hospital in the last year has also reduced or cut access to anesthesia weekend coverage, general surgery and urology, creating a model that is “not sustainable” for ensuring access to care, he said. Rep. Danielle Gregoire, a Marlborough Democrat, voiced her support for the merger. She said some patients are currently forced to seek care outside the UMass system, with some traveling to costlier hospitals in Boston. “It’s critical that we protect and enhance the services offered at Marlborough Hospital so that residents across central Massachusetts can continue to receive high-quality care close to where they live and work, now and in the future,” Gregoire said. Related
**MEDICAID CUTS!*** excerpt: AFTER MONTHS of nationwide uncertainty over looming threats to Medicaid, a clearer — but still murky — road now lies ahead for public health leaders across the Commonwealth. Over 300,000 Massachusetts residents — nearly 5 percent of the state’s population — are expected to lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The sweeping changes will likely hit hardest the state’s Gateway Cities, which are home to a disproportionate share of the state’s immigrants and low-income population, as work requirements and eligibility checks ramp up. During a 2023 Medicaid enrollment purge, MassHealth — the state’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program — identified 15 “priority communities” that officials believed had the most residents at risk of losing coverage — 13 of which were Gateway Cities. - ‘Pay now or pay greater later’: Mass. health centers CEO warns Medicaid cuts will lead to higher costs and strain to health system (May 2025)
excerpt:
THE CROWD, gathered inside the Omni Boston hotel in the city’s Seaport district on Tuesday night, represented the various sectors of the Massachusetts economy, from health care and academia to financial services and real estate. As the attendees of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting mingled, talk inevitably turned to what’s happening in Washington, DC. They are “trying to figure out the impacts of the executive orders, the direction of the tariffs, and the wide range of decisions coming out of Congress and out of the White House, what the implications are for their various sectors,” said Michael Curry, who was among three people honored that evening by the chamber as a “Distinguished Bostonian.” Curry, 56, has spent nearly 30 years walking around Capitol Hill, Boston City Hall, and the State House on Beacon Hill. He rose through the ranks of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, becoming the president and CEO of the group in 2021. The organization represents 52 health centers that serve more than one million patients. His economic sector, health care, is affected like all the others by congressional chainsaws and White House whipsawing, and community health centers are considering partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions, with implications for their patients. “I can tell you who our patients are,” Curry said. “These are people who need access. They’re disproportionately poor. Up to 60 percent of our patients are people of color. They’re immigrants.” It’s a population in need of MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid health insurance program geared towards low-income residents. The largest program in the state’s annual budget, MassHealth is also heavily dependent on money coming from the federal government. Thirty percent of the Massachusetts population (2.1 million residents out of 7.1 million) are on Medicaid. Forty-eight percent of Massachusetts children are covered by MassHealth, according to a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation report. With Medicaid on the chopping block as House GOP lawmakers advanced a spending bill, potentially leading to millions of people across the country losing coverage, Curry sat down with CommonWealth Beacon to delve into what’s happening in DC and how it could affect Massachusetts. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. COMMONWEALTH BEACON: Can you describe the issue at a 30,000-foot level? MICHAEL CURRY: I have to remind people I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, MAGA, super liberal, whatever the polar opposites of that spectrum would be, the bottom line is, if you don’t have health insurance, you don’t get care. Not until it’s critical to get care, which means that you have less chance of survival, which means you suffer longer. And as human beings, we should want that for no one. So our goal should be to make sure that people have a primary care provider, that they can get their cancer diagnosed at stage one instead of stage four, that they can manage that diabetes or that heart disease or that asthma, and you can’t do that without a card in your pocket, without insurance.
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