MetroWest Chooses Floating Hospital For Pediatric Partner | Pediatric care will be more comprehensive
Framingham-based MetroWest Medical Center plans to end its long-standing agreement with Children’s Hospital Boston in favor of a new partnership with the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center.
Details are still being worked out, but the agreement is expected to be in place by July.
“It’s a comprehensive, integrated program that we are developing,” said Andrei Soran, MetroWest’s CEO. Under the plan, children will be treated in Framingham by Floating Hospital docs who can then provide certain complicated care at the Boston facility.
Soran declined to detail the financial aspects of the deal. “We share the risks and the opportunities,” he said.
Fighting Back
MetroWest Medical Center has been under siege for the last few years as Boston hospitals continue to expand into suburban markets and compete for patients.
Both Tufts Medical Center and MetroWest Medical Center receive lower health care insurance reimbursements than hospitals run by Partners HealthCare, according to a Boston Globe series of reports.
Soran said lower reimbursement rates put his hospital at a definite disadvantage as it tries to hold off competition from healthcare insurance companies that receive a higher reimbursement rate from insurance companies.
The new partnership will significantly improve the level of care for pediatric patients, Soran said.
Local pediatricians and those from the Floating Hospital will coordinate care together for children at MetroWest and Floating Hospital pediatric specialists will see patients in Framingham. Full-time Floating Hospital neonatologists will also provide coverage in MetroWest’s special care nursery unit and emergency room.
When a higher level of specific care is needed, then there will be a transfer to the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston at the Tufts Medical Center.
“Floating Hospital for Children has a long history of providing expert pediatric care where it is needed most making it convenient for families. Our physicians and nurses first began caring for patients on a ship in Boston Harbor. It’s only fitting now that we work with excellent community hospitals like MetroWest to ensure that families have the resources they need to be close to home,” said Ellen Zane, Tufts Medical Center’s president and CEO.
MetroWest has a similar agreement with Children’s Hospital Boston, but Soran said that the Boston hospital was not able to meet all of MetroWest’s needs, so it has turned to another partnership.
Children’s Hospital Boston was recently informed that MetroWest had decided to change its pediatric affiliation to Tufts Medical Center, according to Children’s spokesperson Michelle Davis.
The notification followed months of discussion between Children’s and MetroWest, because the Framingham-based hospital said it wanted to expand its pediatric offerings, Davis said. Children’s could not provide MetroWest with those services and still adequately staff its existing facilities, she said.
“We’ve been trying to figure out a strategy to provide pediatric patients and their families with the care they need. They (Floating) run a very successful program in Lowell (General Hospital). We looked at how that was implemented and the progress in care that has been made since it started. All parties involved in talking about such a partnership here (MetroWest) are very enthusiastic and prepared to go forward,” Soran said. The care between the two hospitals will also be deeply integrated, he said.
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