Health

HE A LTH • Fall 2020 5 UMass Memorial clamping down on employee travel UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest employer in Central Massachusetts, is seeking to limit where its caregivers travel this sum- mer amid a spike in coronavirus cases in much of the rest of the country. Any caregivers traveling outside of New England and a few other states where cases have remained low will need to quarantine at home for 14 days using their own paid time off or submit a negative coronavirus test result within 72 hours of restarting work. Those employees will need clearance by the employee health office before returning to work, and the task force said it may modify the requirements if it deems it necessary. The new restrictions don't include all five other New England states: Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. They don't include three others with rela- tively low case numbers: Hawaii, New Jersey and New York. Black, Hispanic residents hit disproportionately by coronavirus Black and Hispanic residents in Worcester County have been infected by coronavirus at proportions multi- tudes higher than white residents, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In Worcester County, Black resi- dents have rates of contracting coro- navirus more than four times higher than white residents, and Hispanic residents' rates more than triple white residents, according to the CDC data. Black residents also had the highest proportionate share of cases in Middlesex, Hampden, Norfolk and Plymouth counties, and Hispanic resi- dents had the worst share in Suffolk County, which is home to Boston, and Bristol County, which includes Fall River and New Bedford. The data covers through late May, about a month after cases in Mass. peaked. Mass. was one of few states to provide such ethnic data for those who've contracted the virus. Economic pain continued for Central Mass. hospitals May was a month when Massachusetts largely got coronavirus under control and hospitals began looking ahead to resuming somewhat normal operations. But it wasn't a return to normalcy with hospitals' financials. Hospitals statewide continued to run deep deficits in May, according to data released by the Center for Health Information and Analysis, a Boston- based independent state agency. Milford Regional Medical Center had a 19.2% operating loss, and the deficit at Harrington Hospital in Southbridge was 8.2%. Milford Regional's worst month was April, with a 39.6% deficit. Harrington's was March, when it was 29.2% in the red. Milford Regional, however, got a boost of good confidence when the New York ratings agency Standard & Poor's upgraded the hospital's bond ratings from negative to stable. S&P had revised downward the hospital's rating in April as one of several care facilities it rated as speculative-grade or had low unrestricted reserves. State moves to shutdown Worcester nursing home Massachusetts health officials are moving toward a potential closure of a Worcester nursing home that allegedly failed to meet requirements of care during the coronavirus pandemic and has a record of poor performance. The center, Hermitage Healthcare at 383 Mill St., is one of three receiving such a termination notice, along with others in Lowell and Wareham. The notice, which came from MassHealth, the state's Medicaid pro- gram, cited a string of failures at the facilities: poor adherence to infection control practices, including separating residents who tested positive for coro- navirus and improper use of personal protective equipment. The facilities each had inadequate staffing ratios and in some cases refused support offered by the state. Hermitage has had 12 coronavirus- related resident deaths during the pandemic, according to the Department of Public Health. For more information visit: www.harringtonhospital.org/provider • I nternal Medicine • Family Medicine • Pediatrics • Specialty Care Offices Now Accepting NEW Patients! UMass Memorial Science Park in Worcester H

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