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Health professionals and officials push bills to preserve hospital services and rein in costs
Summary
Nurses, clinicians and local officials urged the Joint Committee on Public Health to pass bills that would require advance notice, community input, receivership options and governance changes to prevent abrupt hospital service closures and to improve hospital efficiency and accountability.
Witnesses representing clinicians, hospitals, municipalities and employer groups told the Joint Committee on Public Health that recent hospital service closures and a wave of financial distress require new state tools to preserve local access to care.
Katie Murphy, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, told the panel that “the loss of essential services in communities across the Commonwealth is a crisis,” citing recent bankruptcies and abrupt closures that removed maternity, pediatric and behavioral health capacity from some communities.
Speakers described multiple bills. Two sets of bills — H2460/S1503 and H2534/S1574 — would require earlier notice of planned service discontinuations, mandate community…
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