“We are entering what is going to be a down period for hospitals, especially those without market clout,’’ said John McDonough, director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at the Harvard School of Public Health. “There will be far fewer independent, freestanding community hospitals. Some will close, some will be swallowed up by larger systems.’’
So far, few have resorted to cutting medical services, but there are concerns that could happen. “We absolutely want to see that patients have access to care in their communities,’’ said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of Health Care for All, a Boston consumer group. “We also know that hospitals are economic engines in their communities, so employees depend on them. Their fiscal viability is important.’’
The stresses were dramatized earlier this month, when 121-year-old Quincy Medical Center filed for bankruptcy protection days after its trustees voted to be acquired by a for-profit health care provider. In June, 126-year-old North Adams Regional Hospital made its own bankruptcy filing.
“All of us were jolted by the recession,’’ said John N. Kastanis, interim chief executive at Quincy Medical Center. “The reality is that Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have not been adequate, and those reimbursements are going to be ratcheted down even more.’’
Medicare, the federal program that provides health insurance coverage for seniors and is the largest single payer for most hospitals, is set to slash reimbursements by more than $5 billion nationally during this decade. Massachusetts teaching hospitals would stand to lose another $322 million in Medicare reimbursements allocated for training medical residents under a bipartisan deficit-cutting proposal now being considered in Washington.
