UPDATE: Props to Beta Boston, another source of Globe health reporting.
Since the Globe currently has no full-time health and science editor, no science writer and a hard-to-find, often dated health site, we turn to the business section for news on health, or at least health finance and pharma. Perhaps things will pick up in the fall.
In terms of Globe-ish health-sci-ish reporting, we see STAT continuing to pop up in the paper and the paper’s website but not the STAT website. The business section of the print version of today’s paper premieres a weekly column called Kendall Squared. Today, Andrew Joseph reports on the rebranding of the square-less square, the sale of dishes at the closed Hungry Mother restaurant, a Forsyth Institute dentist who runs a children’s clinic in Kuwait and a non-profit dispute resolution group that is being prices out of the Square.
In the meantime, best to follow individual members of the Globe‘s shrinking but solid Metro sci-health team:
Felice J. Freyer @felicejfreyer
And, check the business page. The state Center for Health Information and Analysis has come out with it’s latest hospital profits report and today, The Globe helps sort it out for us.
The state’s biggest hospitals were the most profitable in 2014, with Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest academic medical center, earning $200 million, up 34 percent from the previous year, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital earning $152 million, up 9 percent. Both are owned by Partners HealthCare of Boston.
Other big earners were Baystate Medical Center of Springfield, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The results are for fiscal year 2014, which for most hospitals ended last September.
The profits overall, however, mask some of the struggles in the changing field. Quincy Medical Center lost $39 million last year, the most in the state. Its owner, Steward Health Care System, closed the hospital at the end of the year. North Adams Regional Hospital in the Berkshires closed several months earlier. The push to cut costs has, in part, prompted several hospitals to consider mergers or acquisitions.
Earlier this week, the paper reported that the advent of ACOs has cut Medicare spending at five major health systems in the state
New figures show five Massachusetts health systems saved a combined $141 million during that period as part of the program, which aims to rein in costs by better coordinating care for Medicare patients and cutting unnecessary hospital stays and medical services. Doctors manage care for these patients in pools known as Pioneer accountable care organizations.
Boston Health News 