Speaker Mariano Wants To Save Local Hospitals. Stronger Oversight Over Health Care Chains’ Expansion Is How He Wants To Do It.

Mass. House Speaker Ron Mariano wants to strengthen the state’s ability to review the expansion of health care providers, saying that it will help protect community hospitals faced with stiff competition from larger chains and dwindling local patient rolls.

Local hospitals are in peril, Mariano told GBH News. "In order to ensure their existence and their continued survival, we're looking to make some legal changes that strengthen their position in the health care market," he said.

Later this month, Mariano plans to bring a bill to the House floor that would require the Department of Public Health to consider the cost and market impact of any medical provider expansion that requires new state licensing. By limiting unchecked growth of hospital chains and provider networks opening outpatient facilities and "ambulatory surgery centers," Mariano believes that community hospitals will be better suited to survive in the changing health care market.

Mariano has long been a champion of Massachusetts’ few dozen remaining community hospitals, a commitment that was compounded by the closure of his hometown Quincy Medical Center, the city’s largest employer at the time, in 2014. Mariano said he understands how a hospital closure harms a community.

“It’s a huge impact. I don’t want to see any of these closed and I want to protect their positions from being infringed upon by outside hospitals moving in with these ambulatory surgery centers,” Mariano said.

Mariano’s bill, now being worked on by the Committee on Health Care Financing, would close what Mariano calls a loophole in the current laws. The legislation would require DPH to consider the review conducted by health cost watchdogs at the Health Policy Commission before determining whether there is a need for a health care provider to expand.

Independent community hospitals in Massachusetts include Cape Cod Hospital, Lawrence General Hospital, Heywood Memorial Hospital in Gardner, Holyoke Medical Center, Berkshire Medical Center, South Shore Hospital and Brockton Hospital.

The policy shift would come as the Legislature prepares to pass an almost $3.8 billion spending bill, the House version of which includes $250 million in relief for hospitals with $50 million earmarked for community hospitals.