Following dozens of hospital closures and whereas the state’s medical amenities proceed to face challenges in maintaining nurses at bedsides, advocates and medical practitioners will inform lawmakers that public well being is positioned in danger when companies put revenue over sufferers.
The Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, on Tuesday, will maintain hearings on “An Act Relative to The Closing of Hospital Essential Services,” or S.736/H.1175, and “An Act Relative to Hospital Profit Transparency and Fairness,” or S.790/H.1179, two payments that advocates say are crucial to advertise and defend public well being within the Bay State.
“The hearing comes amid a healthcare crisis in Massachusetts created by hospital corporations prioritizing financial gain over patient safety and care access for years before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Understaffing is causing nurses to flee the bedside and entire communities such as Leominster and Taunton are threatened by maternity and addiction treatment closures,” the Massachusetts Nursing Association wrote in a launch forward of the listening to.
According to the nursing affiliation, since 2009 communities in Massachusetts have seen greater than 40 hospitals and therapy items shut regardless of the very fact the state’s Department of Public Health had decided that the companies they offered had been “necessary for preserving access and health status in a particular service area.”
The resolution to shut these amenities was made in pursuit of revenue, not public curiosity, in response to MNA President and Intensive Care Unit nurse Katie Murphy.
“Current Massachusetts law is failing to meet this moment of crisis for patients and their caregivers. Access to essential services has declined across the Commonwealth because our healthcare system follows a corporate, profit-driven Wall Street model and our state has limited powers to ensure patients can receive necessary care. We need to re-center patients as the most important part of our healthcare system rather than profits,” she stated.
Changing the regulation is critical, Murphy stated, as a result of at present a dedication by DPH {that a} facility is required has no impression on its closure. The proposed laws would prolong the discover interval upfront of a closure or discontinuation in companies and instruct the state Attorney General to hunt an injunction requiring a care company to keep up companies in the course of the discover interval. It would prohibit the “closure of beds, units, or facilities during any declared state of emergency pertaining to health care.”
“We are proud as nurses and healthcare professionals to stand up for our patients and their access to care – however, it is the weakness of our current essential services law that requires caregivers and communities to fight so hard against closures,” Murphy stated.
The listening to comes following the introduced closure of the Birthing Center positioned at UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital’s Leominster Hospital Campus and the Morton Comprehensive Addiction Program positioned at Steward Morton Hospital in Taunton. Both companies had been decided to be “essential” to public well being by DPH however will shut anyway.
“If the Department or Division officially finds services to be ‘essential,’ and then does nothing to prevent those services from being eliminated, then I respectfully submit that our current classification system has no actual value or purpose,” Taunton state Sen. Marc Pacheco stated in written testimony after the announcement Morton would take away the habit program.
The listening to will likely be held in room A-1 of the Massachusetts State House at 1 p.m. and will likely be broadcast dwell at https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4568.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”