Abbreviation PHS President & CEO David F. Torchiana, MD Founded 1994 | Formation 1994 Website www.partners.org Type of business Nonprofit organization | |
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Headquarters Boston, Massachusetts, United States CEO David Torchiana (Mar 2015–) Subsidiaries Massachusetts General Hospital Similar Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Medical Center, Lahey Hospital & Medical, Partners In Health, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirm Profiles | ||
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".
Contents
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 1994–2007), 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:
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:
Spaulding Rehabilitation Network
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 Massachusetts—the state's biggest health insurer—agreed to a deal that raised insurance costs all across Massachusetts. They agreed that Van Faasen would substantially increase insurance payments to Partners HealthCare doctors and hospitals, largely correcting the underpayments of the previous 10 years. Prior to this, Thier had informed all three managed care companies that they would all be paid at the same rate.
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.