Health Care

Nominations for Worcester Business Journal’s second annual Champions of Health Care Awards are due by midnight on Sept. 13.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge approved the sale of six Steward Health Care hospitals here Wednesday, the most significant milestone yet in a saga that has commanded state government's time, attention and money, and will reshape the health care landscape in eastern Massachusetts.

The blur of activity includes ongoing negotiations between Steward and Massachusetts state government over a second, and larger, infusion of public funding that the company says is required to keep its hospitals here open until the sales close/

Employees at Leominster Credit Union, MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, and Mirick O’Connell in Worcester are making strides in their careers.

An extended leave enables people to find their identities and focus on personal health, something they can not do in shorter chunks of time off, according to a lecturer at Harvard Business School.

For this rural Massachusetts area, the hospital’s closure will mean extended ER wait times at neighboring hospitals already pushing capacity, quadrupled ambulance turnaround times, and ultimately, the potential collapse of a healthcare system already spread thin.

The state is arranging to have ambulances on standby outside both Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer and Carney Hospital in Dorchester for a week after the hospitals close Saturday morning and is in talks to repurpose the Ayer hospital in some way, the governor's office said Friday.

Steward Health Care has signed "definitive agreements" to sell four of the six Massachusetts hospitals it has been working to offload since filing for bankruptcy in May.

Worcester County gained 249 biomanufacturing jobs between 2022 and 2023.

Spectrum Health Systems in Worcester, one of the largest human services nonprofits in Central Massachusetts, has promoted long-time Kristin Nolan as its new chief operating officer.