Partners HealthCare - Neighborhood Health Plan

Partners HealthCare is a Boston-based non-profit hospital and physicians network that includes Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), two of the nation’s most prestigious teaching institutions. It was founded in 1994 with H. Richard Nesson, MD, former president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital as CEO of Partners HealthCare and Samuel O. Thier, MD, formerly president of Massachusetts General Hospital as president. According to The Boston Globe, by 2008, Partners became Massachusetts' "largest private employer and its biggest healthcare provider, treating more than a third of hospital patients in the Boston metropolitan area".

History

In 1994, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital were brought together by Partners founding co-chairs John H. McArthur and Ferdinand "Moose" Colloredo-Mansfeld. Jack Connors succeeded them as chair in 1996.

Board of Directors

Edward P. Lawrence, a retired partner at the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray LLP replaced Jack Connors on the Board in 2012.

Jack Connors, the "Boston businessman and power broker" was the "highest profile figure" at Partners HealthCare System Inc. from 1996 to 2012. Connors and William C. Van Faasen, former CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, co-chaired a business consortium that pushed for the state’s universal health coverage law. Connors "worked behind the scenes" to get the Massachusetts health care reform law of 2006 passed.

Partners board members included Earl M. Collier, Anne Finucane (Bank of America), Charles K. Gifford (Bank of America), Richard E. Holbrook (CEO, Eastern Bank), Albert A. Holman, III (Chestnut Partners Inc., investment banking), Jay O. Light (former dean of the Harvard Business School, Maury E. McGough, MD, (North Shore Medical Center Board of Trustees), Cathy E. Minehan (CEO Federal Reserve Bank of Boston 1994â€"2007), Jerold Rosenbaum (Chief of Psychiatry Massachusetts General Hospital), Scott Schoen, Scott M. Sperling (Thomas H. Lee Partners investments), Henri A. Termeer (Genzyme), Dorothy A. Terrell (founding board member of the Commonwealth Institute), Lori Tishler, MD, David Torchiana, and Gwill York, entrepreneur with tech and healthcare companies. York co-founded Lighthouse Capital Partners, based in Cambridge and Menlo Park, in 1994, and led investments in companies such as Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Human Genome Sciences, Cascade Communications, Sirocco Systems, Speechworks, and StorageNetworks.

James J. Mongan, MD, served president and chief executive of Partners in 2003 to 2009. In 2008 Modern Physician magazine named Mongan as the "most powerful physician executive in America". He also received Modern Healthcare's CEO IT Achievement Award. Mongan asked "Connors, who readily admits knowing little about medicine" to extend his tenure.

Gary L. Gottlieb, MD, became president and chief executive of Partners HealthCare at the end of 2009 and he asked Connors to remain in his position on the board.

In 2015 David F. Torchiana, MD, became president and CEO of Partners HealthCare.

Composition

Current members of Partners HealthCare include:

• Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Cooley Dickinson Hospital
• Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital
• Martha's Vineyard Hospital
• Massachusetts General Hospital
• McLean Hospital
• MGH Institute of Health Professions
• Nantucket Cottage Hospital
• Neighborhood Health Plan
• Newton-Wellesley Hospital
• North Shore Medical Center
• Partners Continuing Care
• PCHI

Partners Continuing Care

Partners Continuing Care is the Non-Acute Care Services Division of Partners HealthCare headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The organization provides rehabilitation, long term acute care, skilled nursing, home health care, and hospice services. Partners Continuing Care consists of the following organizations:

• Partners Healthcare at Home
• Partners Hospice
• Partners Private Care

Spaulding Rehabilitation Network

• Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Boston
• Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Cape Cod, formerly Rehabilitation Hospital of the Cape and Islands
• Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care Cambridge, formerly Spaulding Hospital Cambridge
• Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care North Shore, formerly Shaughnessy-Kaplan Rehabilitation Hospital (SKRH)
• Spaulding Nursing and Therapy Center North End, formerly North End Rehabilitation and Nursing Center
• Spaulding Nursing and Therapy Center West Roxbury, formerly The Boston Center for Rehabilitative and Sub-Acute Care
• Clark House Nursing Center at Fox Hill Village
• 23 outpatient centers

Partners International Medical Services

Partners International Medical Services (PIMS) is a subsidiary of Partners HealthCare that focuses on the advancement of global health. PIMS collaborates with foreign embassies, ministries of health, and universities overseas to improve health status indicators directly through patient care initiatives and indirectly through medical conferences and other educational programs for physicians and nurses.

Partners's biomedical research "juggernaut was larger than Harvard University's." and embarked on a multibillion-dollar expansion program that rivals those of all other Massachusetts hospitals combined." A doctors' magazine recently named Partners' current chief executive the most powerful physician executive in the nation.

Expansion

In 2013, Partners HealthCare System's plan to take over 378-bed South Shore Hospital in Weymouth was reviewed due to fears that the expansion plan is anticompetitive, a conduct Partners HealthCare System had been accused of over the past four years in other cases.

Blue Cross

Partners CEO Thier led Partners' efforts to demand higher payments from insurance companies. In May 2000 Thier and William C. Van Faasen, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusettsâ€"the state's biggest health insurerâ€"shook hands on a quiet deal that raised insurance costs all across Massachusetts. They agreed that Van Faasen would substantially increase insurance payments to Partners HealthCare doctors and hospitals while Thier would not allow other insurers to pay less than Blue Cross.

Those who helped broker the deal say Thier promised he would push for the same or bigger payment increases for everything from X-rays to brain surgery from Van Faasen's competition, ensuring that all major insurers would face tens of millions in cost increases. Blue Cross called it a "market covenant."

According to Boston Globe investigative journalists, Blue Cross and other insurers increased the rate it paid Partners HealthCare by 75 percent between 2000 and 2008.