Hospitals Seek State Funds
The Massachusetts Council of Community Hospitals has filed a bill with the legislature that would authorize the Department of Public Health to study community hospitals to determine what destabilizing factors that are harming them, according to the council's executive director, Donald Thieme.
Community hospitals, particularly in the Greater Boston area, argue that increased competition from large, Boston-based hospitals looking to expand their markets results in a decrease in patients for community hospitals, Thieme said.
The council also filed a bill that would support recruitment of primary care doctors for community hospitals through the use of surplus funds from the Health Safety Net Fund, which is the new name for the uncompensated care pool that covers patients with no money that are ineligible for health insurance
A third bill the council filed calls for the creation of a fund to pay for a new state mandate that all doctors and health care providers use the Computerized Physician Order Entry, or CPOE, by 2012. Thieme said community hospitals often do not have the money for infrastructure changes such as the CPOE electronic health record-keeping mandate.
The council has 23 community hospitals as members.
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