Health

HEALTH • November 30, 2015 5 WORCESTER – AFC Doctors Express, the urgent-care services company that is partnering with the Central Massachusetts Independent Physicians Association (CMIPA) to provide urgent care to its patients, opened its first Worcester location. The new clinic is at 117a Stafford St. A partnership with the CMIPA, which represents 170 independent doctors in Central Massachusetts, was announced earlier this year. The partnership is similar to the one between UMass Memorial Health Care and CareWell Urgent Care, which recently opened two sites in the city. SHREWSBURY — Charles River Laboratories will re-open a Shrewsbury lab that has been shut- tered since 2010 with a mixture of new and transplanted jobs. The research-services company has announced that the South Street facility will re-open in the first quar- ter of 2016. The lab was closed in 2010, but a resurgence in pre-clinical services has prompted the company to bring the facility back on line with 40 study rooms, Susan Hardy, corpo- rate vice president investor relations, said. The international company, with more than 8,000 employees, is headquartered in Wilmington. The Shrewsbury site, to be called Charles River Labs Massachusetts, will host an undisclosed number of employ- ees. MARLBOROUGH — Quest Diagnostics has agreed to acquire Hartford-based Clinical Laboratory Partners, a subsidiary of Hartford HealthCare, for an undisclosed amount of money. Quest said in a statement that the deal will enhance access to laboratory services for Connecticut residents served by Hartford HealthCare's five hospitals. Clinical Laboratory Partners, or CLP, acts as the clinical outreach lab service for Hartford Healthcare. Under the agreement, CLP will tran- sition laboratory testing now provid- ed in Newington, Conn., to Quest's rapid-response clinical laboratories in Stratford, Torrington and Wallingford, Conn.; and full-service, state-of-the-art clinical laboratory in Marlborough. The acquisition also includes several CLP service centers and other assets. The deal is expect- ed to close early next year. MILFORD — Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals of Milford has brought on Dr. Nezam Afdhal as the company's chief medical officer, the company announced. The clinical- stage biopharmaceutical company that develops therapeutics for the treatment of viral infections has con- sulted with Dr. Afdhal since 2011. In his new role, he will help lead the next stage of the company's clinical development strategy, Martin Driscoll, president and CEO of Spring Bank, said in a statement. The company's most-advanced prod- uct candidate is a substance that could be used to fight viral infec- tions such as HBV, HCV and RSV. WORCESTER — UMass Memorial Medical Center's University Campus received a "C" score in an industry watchdog's annual ranking of hospital safety. Other area hospi- tals, including St. Vincent's in Worcester and Marlborough Hospital, meanwhile, scored an "A." UMass Memorial's Memorial Campus received a "B" on the safety report. Both UMass Memorial Medical Center campuses are in Worcester. The Leapfrog Group's report says its Hospital Safety Score grades hospitals on how safe they keep their patients from errors, inju- ries, accidents, and infections. WORCESTER — For city leaders who have championed downtown redevelopment efforts, UMass Memorial Health Care's upcoming lease of 75,000 square feet in the Front Street office towers marks major progress toward revitalization. While officials at the Worcester health care system are also enthusias- tic, transitioning UMass Memorial's large information-technology depart- ment to a new location in the midst of a $700-million IT project, will also be a logistical feat. In addition to relocating existing employees, the system is also going to add 200 new workers, about half of them employ- ees and half of them contract work- ers, to its IT department, creating a team of about 500 people. WORCESTER — Worcester-based UMass Memorial Health Care will bring 500 information-technology employees downtown following the $36-million redevelopment of 100 and 120 Front St. in downtown Worcester. The downtown location, with a lease signed for 74,000 square feet, for UMass will include hun- dreds of new jobs, UMass Memorial President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson announced, as part of the company's $700-million switch to a new elec- tronic health record system. The employees would be in place by the end of 2017, with UMass Memorial to begin using 20,000 square feet of space as a training center before the end of 2015. Dickson did not specify how many of the 500 employees at the downtown site would be new, but said the decision to have the office sited in downtown Worcester was made with the continuing rede- velopment of the city in mind. MARLBOROUGH — A drug-deliv- ering and self-dissolving arterial stent made by Boston Scientific has received Food and Drug Administration approval, the Marlborough-based company announced. Boston Scientific's SYNERGY Bioabsorbable Polymer Drug-Eluting Stent System (BP-DES) has been approved for the treatment of coronary artery disease. It is the only stent of its kind in the country, according to the company. With this FDA approval, the company will begin commercialization of the stent system, Boston Scientific said in a statement. WORCESTER — A partnership between the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Connecticut Health Center has been selected for up to $29.2 million in funding as part of the federal Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative. Funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will go to 39 health care collaborative networks around the country. The partnership between the UMass and UConn entities — to be called The Southern New England Practice Transformation Network — will receive up to $29.2 million, UMass Medical School said in a statement. The initiative stems from the Affordable Care Act and is designed to support more than 140,000 clini- cian practices around the country over the next four years in sharing, adapting and further developing their comprehensive quality improvement strategies, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. MARLBOROUGH — UMass Memorial-Marlborough Hospital has announced a nicotine-free hiring policy for new employees. Nicotine will now be included in the laborato- ry drug screening applicants under- go after receiving an offer of employment from Marlborough Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Ellen Carlucci. Drug screening is done in conjunction with the required pre-employment medical evaluation, she said. "Hiring nicotine-free employees is part of a larger effort to be a role model in our community by setting a healthy example," Francis Meringolo, vice president of human resources, said in a statement from the hospital. WORCESTER —Two independent research teams at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have worked out a key step in HIV-1 infection — and their findings point to a possible way to fight the virus. Further, new treatments for other infections caused by similar envel- oped viruses could be speeded by the discovery. Through different means, the two teams at the Worcester institution unraveled part of the mechanism of retroviral infec- tion in host cells. The details could lead to the development of drugs targeting one of the few proteins the HIV-1 virus makes from its own DNA: called Nef. Drugs would aim to take that protein down. Nef, the researchers showed, disables two cell membrane proteins that otherwise protect the host by somehow imped- ing the virus's ability to replicate and spread to other cells. FRAMINGHAM — MetroWest Medical Center turned around its prospects through June of this year, but Clinton and Athol Hospitals slipped, posting losses, according to the Center for Health Information and Analysis. MetroWest Medical Center, in Framingham and Natick, managed a profit in the first six months of its fiscal year. The hospi- tal, owned by Texas-based Tenet Healthcare, had a 7.4-percent total { Health Care Briefs } Continued on Page 6

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