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26 2019 Economic Forecast • Worcester Business Journal • www.wbjournal.com Nashoba Valley Medical Center, Sal Perla, resigned. Korry Dow, the hospi- tal's CFO, was made interim president. Perla was been named the president of Norwood Hospital, which, like Nashoba Valley Medical Center, is part of Steward Health Care. MetroWest Medical Center's got its own new top executive in CEO Andrew Harding, who replaced Jeffrey Liebman in October, two months after Liebman resigned after about a year on the job. At other health entities, Fallon Health promoted Annamaria Salisbury to lead its Summit ElderCare program as executive director in January. Joyce Murphy, the executive vice chancellor for Commonwealth Medicine at UMass Medical School in Worcester, stepped down in August and was succeeded by the former CEO of Clinton Hospital, Lisa Colombo. Frances Anthes, the president and CEO of Family Health Center of Worcester, will retire at the end of the year. Her replacement hasn't yet been announced. Although she hasn't depart- ed yet, Antonia McGuire, the CEO of the Edward M. Community Health Center, has said she will retire in July. >> Nurse staffing ballot question fails A major nursing union pushing for higher staffing levels in hospitals took their case straight to voters in November – and lost badly. Massachusetts voters rejected the bal- lot question, 70 percent to 30. In the wake of the resounding loss – which hospitals spent nearly $25 million to defeat – both hospital administrations and the union spoke of ways to contin- ue to improve care without the staffing mandate, which the state's Health Policy Commission said would have increased costs for hospitals by up to $949 million a year. The staffing mandate would have made Massachusetts only the second state, along with California, to require certain levels of nurse staffing per patient. It would have dramatically changed the way hospitals staffed their units with nurses, which hospital administrators said would have been so costly they would have had no choice but to eliminate other programs or reduce other staff. The new standards, which would have went into effect starting Jan. 1, would have applied nurse-to-patient staffing ratios depending on specialty and the severity of a patient's condition. >> Budget challenges at UMass UMass Memorial Health Care cut services in several areas this year due in large part to a budget crunch. UMass Memorial says its hospitals serve a significantly greater share of Medicaid and Medicare patients than other healthcare organizations in the region. Cuts in reimbursements in those programs have dealt the hospital system a greater challenge this year. In January, UMass Memorial closed its endoscopy unit at UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital. In the spring, it closed Plumley Village Health Services in Worcester, an inpatient pediatrics unit and a cardiac rehabilita- tion unit in Leominster, and an urgent care center in Fitchburg. Low patient counts and a drive for At Harvard Pilgrim, we've got plans for you. We're listening to the communities we serve and building on our 50-year promise to make personalized, fl exible, and affordable health plans more accessible across New England. Get to a healthier, happier you at GetHaPi.org/MA. S:9" S:5.5" T:9" T:5.5" B:9" Continued from Page 25 H e a l t h C a re Nursing students practice health care on a test patient.