Central Mass. hospitals losing patient share to state's other regions

Photo | Grant Welker UMass Memorial Medical Center's Memorial Campus in Worcester

Write a Comment

By Grant Welker

It's a long-running ideal for hospitals in Central Massachusetts and elsewhere in the state that doesn't want to lose patients to Boston hospitals: keep patients near home for services.

But Central Massachusetts hospitals are losing a slight share of patients statewide and in absolute numbers, according to data released Monday by the state's Center for Health Information and Analysis that included 2016-2019 patient numbers.

Those patients aren't necessarily going to Boston hospitals. The Boston area also saw a small decline at 1%, with some numbers increasing just south of Boston, on the Cape and Islands, and in the Berkshires, with the health data agency breaking out figures by regions and major hospital systems.

The number of patient discharges, a key indicator of a hospital's utilization, dropped by less than 2% in Central Massachusetts. In MetroWest, discharges rose almost 1%. As a share of the state's overall patient discharge count, the Central Massachusetts number dropped from 10.2% to 10.1%. MetroWest's number went from 3.9% to 4.0%.

Both major Central Massachusetts hospital systems — Tenet Healthcare, which owns MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, and UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester — also saw small patient count declines. Both dropped by roughly 2% from 2016 to 2019. The state's total discharge count rose by almost 1% in that time, with increases at Somerville-based Mass General Brigham and Springfield-based Baystate Health, among others.