Mass General Brigham Begins Regulatory Process on Patient Care Initiatives

Yesterday, Mass General Brigham filed plans with the Commonwealth’s Determination of Need (DoN) office for three previously announced projects. The projects will improve patient access to care at lower cost sites, improve community hospital access, and modernize one of its flagship hospitals.

“The three initiatives will dramatically improve the delivery of patient care,” said Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO of Mass General Brigham. “These projects will enable us to meet the needs of our patients by bringing lower cost care options to their home and community, making community hospital investments to accommodate more routine care, and improving access for the most complex cases at one of our flagship hospitals. While the pandemic temporarily postponed our long-standing plans, it also reinforced the need to provide more health care options for our patients.”

Over the past 18 months, Mass General Brigham has transformed itself into a unified system that is focused on providing patients the best care in the best setting, according to their needs. A key component of this strategy focuses on value-based models that ensure patients will be able to receive the highest quality care for routine medical matters closer to home and at lower costs. At the same time, patients with more complex cases will be able to access world-class care at its flagship academic hospitals, harnessing internationally renowned research and therapeutics. By delivering affordable primary care, specialty care and behavioral health care in the community, with patient-centered programs and services, Mass General Brigham will deliver better outcomes for patients.

Mass General Brigham Integrated Care
The needs and relationships of patients, physicians and care givers is at the heart of care delivery. Mass General Brigham is reimagining the outpatient experience, based on research, to address new ways to deliver care to our patients – at lower costs. As a result, the proposed new sites will offer a range of services such as primary care, behavioral health and specialty care -- for example orthopedics and neurology. The sites will provide ambulatory surgery and a full suite of imaging all closer to the homes of our patients. The centers will be located in:

• Westwood (an expansion of existing site)
• Woburn
• Westborough
• Salem (New Hampshire)
   

Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital Campus Expansion
The second of the previously announced projects filed today makes added investments in a cost-effective community setting – a key component of the Mass General Brigham strategy to move secondary general medicine care away from academic medical centers when medically appropriate.

BWFH inpatient facilities have not been expanded since the inpatient building was constructed in 1976. The hospital’s existing 171 inpatient beds are down from 259 in 1976 due to increased need for clinical support spaces and technology. Plans filed today include:

• 78 additional single occupancy medical/surgical beds.
• 8-bed observation unit (For post-operative/post-procedure patients).
• Relocated and expanded endoscopy services, including one advanced procedure room.
• Relocated and expanded radiology services
   

Massachusetts General Hospital New Patient Care Building
Massachusetts General Hospital’s proposed Cambridge Street Project has been guided by a growing need to modernize the campus for growth of high acuity programs and to enable state-of-the-art care. The project will create new centers of excellence and offer much needed modernization of patient rooms.

Single rooms have become the standard of care to support the healing process as they are more restful, enable private communication with the care team, encourage more family participation and support infectious disease prevention. Only 38% of MGH’s rooms are private, while most of our academic peers are at or near 100%. This plan seeks to address challenges in cohorting patients, particular infections, and high census that contribute to emergency department boarding and delays in transferring high acuity cases from community hospitals.

Focusing on our high acuity patient populations, plans call for a new cancer center and new cardiac care center designed to embrace the latest in rapidly evolving technologies and treatments. The two centers will enable the teams and support services to be co-located in a way that is efficient and patient-centric.

The three projects filed yesterday will combine to create thousands of new construction jobs once the regulatory process is complete as well as hundreds of permanent full-time jobs upon completion.

Media Contact

Mass General Brigham:
Rich Copp rcopp@partners.org
Bridget Perry bperry7@partners.org