Brown U. tries to fend off expansionist Partners HealthCare

Part of the Warren Alpert Medical School, aka the Brown Medical School, in Providence.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com:

Brown University’s plan to join with for-profit Prospect Medical Holdings to buy Care New England to fend off Partners HealthCare’s bid for CNE is motivated by a very reasonable fear. Partners is joined at the hip with the Harvard Medical School. Letting the Partners behemoth into Rhode Island would result in  many patients and clinicians who might otherwise stay in Rhode Island going to Partners’ famous Harvard-affiliated hospitals in Greater Boston, perhaps ravaging the small Brown Medical School in the process.

Indeed, Partners would suck a lot of oxygen out of the Ocean State’s health-care sector. But the takeover looks full-steam ahead. Partners’ Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital may well already be planning to welcome many new patients from Little Rhody.

Will hospital merger mania continue?

Excerpted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.

The collapse of affiliation talks between Care New England,  the Rhode Island hospital chain, and Southcoast Health, in southeastern Massachusetts, as did the collapse of Lifespan and Care New England talks a few years back, raises the question of when we’ll see another hospital chain merger around here, given the inevitable turf battles.

With the drive for economies of scale and for sharing access to the best care and research, will the latest collapse lead to a big Boston-based chain coming in and taking over? Partners HealthCare, whose hospitals include Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s, might eye expansion in these parts because Massachusetts regulators think that it has gotten too big and powerful in Greater Boston. The Brown Medical School would presumably not like a Partners invasion because Partners is joined at the hip with the Harvard Medical School behemoth. Maybe given the size and executive salaries of hospitals these days, affiliating with the Harvard Business School would be appropriate.

Many hospital chains want to merge to strengthen their bargaining power with huge insurance companies. Maybe in 10 years, we’ll have “Medicare for all,’’ which will make much of this moot.

In the meantime, we have something to learn from those independent hospitals, such as South County Hospital,  in southern Rhode Island, that have maintained their independence and high-quality care in the face of the massive disruption that that healthcare sector is now undergoing.