Cape Cod and Boston healthcare organizations affiliate
Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC) and Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH) this week announced a clinical affiliation that they believe will expand access to comprehensive care for patients, visitors and the Cape Cod community. The affiliation is intended to advance the breadth and depth of CCHC’s clinical programs locally and provide seamless, coordinated access to BILH providers and facilities for services that cannot be provided locally.
“This affiliation will allow us to innovate, bolster key service lines, recruit and train new physicians, and keep more care close to home,” said CCHC President and CEO Michael Lauf.
Under the new agreement, CCHC will remain independent and locally governed, and all of its current relationships and affiliations with other entities, like Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Care Collaborative, UMass Medical School, Steward Health Care Network, BU Surgical Residency Program and Cape Cod Community College, will remain in place and continue unchanged, Lauf said.
“This is a strategic clinical affiliation aimed at enhancing the care we provide and strengthening our ability to remain independent, while having a strong clinical affiliate as a resource,” he said.
“The healthcare industry continues to evolve every day, and over the years we have continually sought ways to navigate and adjust to these changes,” Lauf continued. “ We recognize that strategic partners are sometimes necessary to be able to fulfill our mission, and we believe this new affiliation will help move us toward our goal of providing the best, most accessible healthcare possible for our patients and our community.”
BILH President and CEO Kevin Tabb, MD said in a press release this week that the new affiliation “reflects our shared commitment to expanding access to extraordinary care in community settings.” He said BILH was “honored” to be partnering with CCHC to build on CCHC’s legacy of providing “high quality care to residents and visitors alike” over the past 100 years.
In seeking this affiliation, CCHC saw it as a way to improve and enhance care, Lauf said. He said no assets or ownership was exchanged in the agreement and that CCHC is very strong financially. The organization will continue to invest back into the system, including facilities, technology and people, he said.
“We will continue to be bold in our investments in new programs and opportunities under the Cape Cod Healthcare umbrella,” he said. “This focus remains front and center in our vision for the future of CCHC.”
Lauf said he expects that the new affiliation with BILH will “serve as a catalyst” for the development of joint clinical programs at CCHC. CCHC will selectively choose when to partner in clinical programs and other opportunities with BILH, and always has the ability to approve or decline any venture that will not further the goals and mission of CCHC, he said.
Under the new affiliation, BILH will be the preferred provider for services CCHC is unable to provide locally and will give patients better access to tertiary and quaternary services not yet provided on Cape Cod. Lauf pointed out that CCHC chose to affiliate with BILH because of their “top-notch, quality services, facilities and programs that will complement our own services and programs nicely.”
However, CCHC will continue to honor patient choice or physician preference, Lauf assured. “Nothing about this affiliation precludes the ability of patients or physicians to make their own clinical choices,” he said.
The first two areas within CCHC that will be positively impacted by the new affiliation with BILH are Cardiac Surgery and Primary Care Services. The CCHC Cardiac Surgery Services, which are currently provided by surgeons from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, will begin transitioning to a BILH program in April, and the transition will proceed over the next six months, according to Lauf.
To enhance Primary Care access on Cape Cod, CCHC and BILH will work together to recruit 10 primary care physicians to Cape Cod in the next two years, Lauf told the Cape Cod Times.
“Building on our shared expertise, we will work together with BILH to improve access to this crucially important service line in our region,” he told physicians, employees and volunteers in a communication this week announcing the new affiliation. He noted that BILH has had success with the expansion of these services with other affiliations, particularly in the Brockton, Lawrence and Cambridge areas.
The two healthcare organizations will also work together on physician recruitment efforts, he said, and they will jointly recruit physicians in Cardiac Surgery and Primary Care. The affiliation will also open access to graduate education and physician training on Cape Cod, he added.
In the communication to staff, Lauf thanked them for their tireless efforts over the past two years of the pandemic, as well as historically through the years. “I hope you will receive this news as a positive sign that we are optimistic and resolute that the future of CCHC remains incredibly bright,” he wrote.
