Steward Health Care, the bankrupt 31 (and counting . . . down) hospital system is attempting to cut facilities in the course of trying to save itself through its Chapter 11 reorganization.
That effort, which involves selling facilities, failed as to two such hospitals in Massachusetts, Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center, which will close at or around the end of August.
Although politicians (more on this below) sound bite the impact of the pending closures on “the communities the hospitals serve”, my audience, and that means you, should focus on the impact hospital closures have on physician groups.
Certainly, there’s a lesson here for hospital-based groups: Do not mind-melded or arc weld your existence onto that of any single facility. If Carney is the only hospital at which your radiology or anesthesiology group practices, you’ll soon have no place to practice. Your group’s existence is moot. The time for the rest of you to consider a multi-facility (and not in the same health “system” either) strategy is now, before you’re in the same position.
There’s also a lesson here for office-based physicians. Your colleagues in medical buildings, whether on campus or close to failed facilities will soon have views of a fenced-off and plywood-shuttered building. What you thought was a walk across the street to see patients might now be a drive across town. What you thought was a magnet for referrals might be a hole in the ground.
As a sideshow on the order of trained unicorns jumping over rainbows, the Governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey (D), blamed the closures on “selfish greed”. I’m not sure how she distinguishes “selfish” greed from regular greed or, I suppose, from sky high taxation. I do know that in the nocturnal visions of someone who produces nothing yet consumes much, it is possible to run a money losing business forever; however, reality is a bitch.
No matter what you think the odds are that the hospital at which you practice or office next to will survive for another 50 years, it would be wise to hedge your bet.