UMass, Harrington were both on search for new partners

Photo | TMS Aerial Solutions UMass Memorial Health Care's University Campus in Worcester

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By Grant Welker

Harrington HealthCare System began looking for potential partners after starting a committee almost two years ago to explore the Southbridge-based system's financial future.

After looking into 11 potential hospital partners, it landed on the best one: Worcester-based UMass Memorial Health Care. But Harrington wasn't the only one talking to other hospitals. So was UMass.

"Right now in health care in Massachusetts, everyone's talking to everyone," Dr. Eric Dickson, the president and CEO of UMass Memorial, said on a conference call Wednesday after UMass' planned takeover of Harrington was announced.

The UMass system includes two acute-care hospitals in Worcester, along with others in Clinton, Leominster and Marlborough, all of which came together in the 1990s. UMass has looked to expand since but would agree to a deal only if it made sense to do so, Dickson said.

"We've said, 'No' more often than we've said, 'Yes,'" he said.

UMass Chief Administrative Officer Doug Brown was also blunt about the challenges facing smaller independent hospitals like Harrington.

"Harrington, to its credit, has been able to read the tea leaves," he said. "They know the future for standalone community hospitals is not great. It's a tough environment."

It wasn't that Harrington was in a precarious situation financially, said Ed Moore, Harrington's president and CEO. The hospital wanted to be proactive, he said.

"The trend is that, for our size compared to others in the state, we're very healthy financially," he said. "Much of it due to our growth over the last decade or more, but it's probably not sustainable.

Moore, who will stay on through the expected integration into the UMass system, said UMass showed it was committed to investing in facilities and equipment, and the two were already partners on other areas including tele-neurology services.

"In the end, the board felt that UMass was the really good fit," he said.

Bringing Harrington into UMass, which still requires state approval, will include folding Harrington into UMass' electronic medical records system, known as Epic. Financial savings are also expected by eventually sharing compliance, information technology and other administrative areas.

Dickson expects to be able to better keep patients at Harrington more often if UMass specialists are able to spend time at the Southbridge campus. Harrington has far more available capacity to treat patients than UMass' two crowded Worcester hospitals. Treating some patients at Harrington also becomes easier when the hospitals share a medical records system, Dickson said.

Unlike nurses and others at UMass, Harrington's providers are not unionized. Brown said he expects that labor status to continue.