Health

HE A LTH • Fall 2019 5 Health insurers Tufts, Harvard Pilgrim to merge Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in August announced plans to combine their two organizations into a new company to serve nearly 2.4 million members in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The new organization has not yet been named, and company officials have not said where it will be based — Harvard Pilgrim is headquartered in Wellesley and Tufts in Watertown. The deal is subject to various state and fed- eral approvals, and the two companies will remain independent during the approval process. The deal amounts to a significant consolidation in the Massachusetts health care insurance market, with two of the largest insurers joining forc- es and creating a single, larger rival to the state's biggest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Policyholders and consumers will be on the lookout for impacts on them, and the agreement will be also be vet- ted by government regulators. The state's top three commercial payers — Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts — account for nearly 62%of the private health insurance market mem- bership, according to a Center for Health Information and Analysis report that used September 2018 data. Blue Cross Blue Shield is by far the largest by membership, according to the report, with 1.6 million members in Massachusetts to Harvard Pilgrim's roughly 500,000 and Tufts' roughly 360,000. Fallon Health in Worcester reported 264,000 members in May. UMass Memorial ranked 6th best hospital in state UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester landed sixth in Massachusetts in the new U.S. News & World Report rankings of the best hospitals. UMass Memorial was the only hos- pital in Central Massachusetts to reach what the report said were high enough standards for a numbered ranking in the annual review. Nine hospitals in the state made the designation, topped by Massachusetts General Hospital, which landed second nationally. Hospitals are rated as high perform- ing if they score in the top 10% of a specialty. UMass reached that level in five areas: aortic valve surgery, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease care, colon cancer surgery, heart bypass sur- gery and heart failure care. Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester and Milford Regional Medical Center didn't receive an overall ranking but both were listed as high performing in two specialties. Continued on Page 6 diagnosis, treatment, recovery and survivorship Advanced Cancer Care is just minutes away. 55 Sayles St., Southbridge MA | 508-764-2400 harringtonhospital.org/cancer Christopher Seidler, MD Medical Director Donna Kentley, PA-C Jeffrey Gordon, MD Fitchburg State adding MBA in health care Fitchburg State University is expand- ing its MBA program to include an online program in healthcare manage- ment. The program has been designed to accommodate those already working in the field, with all coursework online in a seven-week time period. The new MBA can be completed in 12 months. The healthcare management MBA is aimed at helping students identify and implement effective solutions for chal- lenges in healthcare, with subjects of study including healthcare marketing, finance and law. It will be taught by the same Fitchburg State faculty who teach on campus. The new program begins this fall and will have multiple start dates each year. Tuition will be $12,510, with no requirements for a graduate manage- ment admission test or graduate record examination. Medical device firm to expand in $6.9M Northborough facility STERIS Corp., a surgical device firm, has paid $6.9 million for a building next to its existing Northborough facil- ity for a planned expansion. A STERIS subsidiary, STERIS Applied Sterilization Technologies, will use the warehouse to expand its servic- es, which include contract sterilization and laboratory services for medical device and pharmaceutical customers before those products — everything form heart stents to bandages — enter the healthcare supply chain. STERIS said it is planning expan- sions to its radiation-processing capaci- ty in the next two years across four sites: in Northborough and others in California, Illiniois and The Netherlands. Expanding radiation-pro- cessing facilities allows the company to support customers with routine servic- es and with processing redundancy. STERIS Applied Sterilization Technologies, which has roughly 75,000 square feet of space at 435 Whitney St., right near the town line with Berlin and Marlborough, bought 425 Whitney St. in a deal closed July 18. The compa- ny, which is based in the Cleveland area, bought the site from DRA Advisors of New York. The 46,000-square-foot building at 425 Whitney St. is the former home of Metrie, a Vancouver, B.C.,-based maker of interior home moldings. Metrie moved into a new 220,000-square-foot warehouse at 301 Bartlett St. The five-acre property at 425 Whitney St. was last assessed by the town at $2.8 million.

• Cover