At the DPH virtual hearing on April 6, SHARE members from both UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Memorial Marlborough Hospital testified against MGB’s proposal to expand to Westborough. As the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports, “Voices of many, including local and state officials, rose in opposition to Mass General Brigham's plans for an ambulatory care center in Westboro as the Department of Public Health hosted a hearing on the application for the project.”
Below are some highlights of SHARE members’ testimony:
Kim Latrobe, SHARE Rep and Vascular Tech, said, “I love my job and the patients that I care for. I hear firsthand about the communities struggle along with personal family troubles with the economic impact of the pandemic. Any increase to the cost of care will greatly affect the families with their continued health care. MGB has a track record of merging, acquiring or pushing out community healthcare systems and then pricing services at a higher cost, increasing the financial burden placed upon patients throughout the Commonwealth.”
Kelly Fournier, Radiation Therapist at the Cancer Center at Marlborough Hospital voiced her concerns. “A lot of our patients have MassHealth insurance. We welcome and treat everyone. They are just as sick and just as deserving of our care as anyone else, even though our hospitals get paid less for caring for them than for patients with private insurance. I worry that a new MGB facility in Westborough would pull the private insurance patients away from UMass Memorial. We need those patients too. It makes up for the cost of caring for MassHealth patients. Our safety net hospitals will be in financial danger and may not survive. That could be a huge impact not only on our jobs, but also on our patients who need a safety net hospital like UMass Memorial. They need us to be here for them.”
Rita Caputo at work in the Primary Care Clinic
Rita Caputo, SHARE Co-President at the Med Center testified, “If MGB drives up the costs of health care, it’s going to hurt everyone except MGB. At least we have a union to try to figure out what to do about it with our hospital, on behalf of our members. I feel bad for all the non-union workers out there, and the small businesses trying to provide health insurance for their employees.”
Janet Wilder, SHARE Organizer, wrapped up her statement by saying, “On behalf of over 3000 SHARE members and their families, we urge DPH to protect existing good local jobs and to keep the cost of our health care from increasing unnecessarily. That means taking a really close look at the MGB proposal, asking the Health Policy Commission to do a truly independent cost analysis, and then making the right decision.”
Scheduled from 6p-9p, the hearing lasted until 10pm because there were so many people who wanted to have a say. Testimony against the MGB proposal outnumbered testimony in favor by about 3-to-1, it seemed. Taryn Harding, Ultrasound Tech from Marlborough Hospital, said the next day, “I’m inspired by last night’s hearing. I feel like those who are “opposed” dominated that call . . . over four-and-a-half hours-worth of it!”