Steward Health Care

Seeking federal dollars and more cost-controls, the Baker administration is reworking Medicaid on at least two fronts, moving toward population health and installing independent assessors for people in need of a range of services.

After staging a picket in August amid stalled contract negotiations with Steward Health Care System, registered nurses at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer have ratified a contract with Steward — their first since they voted to unionize with the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) in July 2014.

Health care workers at Nashoba Valley Medical Center, in Ayer, who voted to form a union with 1199SEIU in January 2015 will receive a pay increase and other benefit enhancements as part of a new union contract agreement reached with Steward Health Care.

Hours before the Senate dismissed a proposal directing MassHealth to contract with provider groups, the lobby group that represents health insurers submitted alternative language to one of the major proponents of the idea.

One of the state's largest health care providers hopes the state budget that's being assembled might spur the state's most expensive program to embrace an alternative payment model.

The proposed closure of Quincy Medical Center has been pushed back to Feb. 4, and the attorney general's office on Tuesday raised the possibility of legal action against the hospital's owners.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association has been on the move in Central Massachusetts in recent months. In July, registered nurses at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer voted to join the union. Two months later, RNs at Athol Hospital did the same.

More than 120 registered nurses at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer have voted overwhelmingly to join the state's largest nurses' union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the union said. The 123 RNs at the hospital, owned by Steward Healthcare, cast their ballots last week.

A California-based company will become the new overseer of “hospitalist services,” those handled by physicians who care for admitted patients at nine health care facilities in Massachusetts owned by Steward Health Care System. Those facilities include Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer.

Like his predecessor, Jack Dutzar, Armin Ernst is both a physician and a CEO. Amid the maelstrom...