Milford Regional Medical Center

Medical professionals – especially those who work in an intensive care unit or emergency room – are used to seeing heartbreaking cases of disease, tragic accidents or violence. Virtually nothing, though, has been like the coronavirus pandemic.

Central Massachusetts hospitals generally struggled to reach a break-even point financially despite millions of dollars in federal aid meant to help during the coronavirus pandemic.

With cases rising sharply again, hospital officials planning for the winter are hoping that low hospitalization and death rates will continue, as a consequence of both a better understanding of the pandemic and a much younger population getting sick.

Milford Regional Medical Center is now using for the first time one consistent electronic medical record system throughout the hospital and affiliated medical offices.

The coronavirus pandemic has been not only a health challenge to hospitals in Central Massachusetts and beyond, but also a financial one. Fortunately for the larger Central Massachusetts hospitals, they came into 2020 with healthy financials.

What might normally be the most benign announcement — visitors to Milford Regional Medical Center may now use the front lobby — is another sign of the hospital's return to normalcy following the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Central Massachusetts hospitals are bringing home a range of awards for the care they offer.

Milford Regional Medical Center has secured state approval for a maternal continuing care nursery, allowing it to offer higher-level care for babies.

After a small spike in confirmed Worcester County coronavirus cases at the end of July and the start of August, the number of positive tests is again on the decline, falling for the last two weeks.

May was a month when Massachusetts largely got coronavirus under control and hospitals began looking ahead to resuming somewhat normal operations. But it wasn't a return to normalcy with hospitals' financials.