Boston, Dec. 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Partners HealthCare today announced a plan to bring health care closer to where patients live, at lower costs. Partners plans to open four state-of-the-art outpatient centers that will offer a wide range of new health care options that better meets patients’ changing needs. Initially, Partners will invest nearly $400 million in new health care offerings throughout eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
“We need to meet our patients where they are, and address the changing demands of the marketplace,” said Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO of Partners HealthCare. “Patients want convenience; they want access to quality care at a lower cost, and all of us want to do a better job of addressing the widespread disparities that still exist in health care. This plan begins to address each of those aims.”
The new sites will range in size and offer a complement of services such as primary care, behavioral health and specialty care – for example orthopaedics and neurology. Smaller sites will be solely focused on providing integrated, multispecialty (primary and specialty) physician services, while large sites will provide ambulatory surgery and a full suite of imaging in addition to physician services. The centers will be located in:
- Westwood (an expansion of existing site)
- Woburn
- Westborough
- Salem (New Hampshire)
Partners recently announced a unified system strategy to create the premier integrated health care system of the future that delivers excellence across the full spectrum of health care, leveraging the range of capabilities of Partners’ world-class clinicians and staff at academic medical centers, renowned specialty hospitals, community hospitals and other sites. A key component of the strategy focuses on developing value-based models that deliver affordable primary care, secondary care and behavioral health care in the community and makes patient-centered programs and services central to delivering better outcomes for our patients. As part of the development of these centers, Partners is working to reimagine the outpatient experience through research aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the needs of patients, physicians and care givers, as relationships are ultimately at the heart of care delivery.
“Our academic medical centers and community hospitals provide world-class secondary and tertiary care when that is what you need,” said John Fernandez, President of the newly formed Partners Ambulatory Care and President of Mass Eye and Ear. “However, for less complex care, these new options will provide the level of quality that our patients have come to expect from our clinicians, and we will be able to deliver that care at lower costs for patients and insurers. We think this type of alternative is what patients, insurers and employers expect.”
As part of this initiative, Partners will also spend up to $35 million in the Boston area to reduce inequities in health outcomes and to increase access to behavioral health services. A substantial portion of the funds will be focused on improving outcomes for Partners primary care patients who currently experience worse health outcomes in areas such as hypertension and diabetes and have inadequate access to behavioral health care. Funding to train future behavioral health clinicians who match the ethnic and linguistic diversity of patients living in Boston neighborhoods and for piloting innovative community-based approaches to addressing behavioral health needs will also be included.
“We track health outcomes data of our patients very closely and we know that we – like all other providers – can do a better job ensuring health equity among patients of different races and backgrounds,” said Thomas Sequist, MD, Partners Chief Quality and Safety Officer. “We will make science and data-driven investments to address these inequities and measure and report upon the progress we make.”
The new outpatient centers require local and state regulatory review. Partners estimates these new investments could generate more than 700 new jobs.
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Partners HealthCare is an integrated health care system, founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, that offers patients a continuum of coordinated and high-quality care. In addition to its two academic medical centers, the system includes community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, a physician network, community health centers, home health and long-term care services, and other health care entities. Partners is a non-profit organization that is committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Partners is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations and is a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.