At Tufts Medical Center, pressure to cut costs in a city rich with hospitals

Brandeis University News






Comments




Print







In many cities, for patients needing complex medical care, Tufts Medical Center would be the only destination in town.But in Boston, a city rich with big hospitals, Tufts has long been overshadowed by larger competitors with more prestigious names and deeper pockets.



The disparities between Tufts and its competitors have been thrown into sharp relief by an ugly labor dispute. On Wednesday, more than 1,200 members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association went on strike after the union and the hospital failed to come to terms on staffing levels, wages, and retirement benefits.Like all care providers, Tufts says it’s under pressure to control costs, especially as uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act continues to loom.



Get Fast Forward in your inbox:


Forget yesterday's news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email.





But even as it has grown its network of doctors and formed new partnerships with other hospitals, the Tufts University-affiliated medical center lacks the market clout to demand the same level of payments from insurers as rivals such as Brigham and Women’s receive.





Nurses demonstrated Wednesday
Nurses flooded the streets outside Tufts Medical Center Wednesday in the first strike of its kind at a major Boston hospital in 31 years.





Tufts says it simply has less money to spend, and that’s why it can’t and won’t meet its nurses’ financial demands. The nonprofit hospital, along with its doctors network, ended its last fiscal year with a small operating loss of $2.6 million. It collected $974.5 million in revenue in the year ending Sept. 30, 2016.


“I think the root cause is that Tufts has to compete with the other academic medical centers in the city, and they don’t get the same level of reimbursement,” said David E. Williams, a consultant at Health Business Group in Boston. “The disparities of the payments ...

Read More