The Boston Globe has, at last, dug into the big business-of-healthcare story in its state.
In an important article earlier this month, the paper did a fine job probing deeply into the deal between Partners HealthCare and Attorney General Martha Coakley and unpacking an agreement that allowed Partners, the state’s giant hospital system, to acquire three community hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts in exchange for temporary limits on expansion and prices. The deal prompted an uprising from wary critics and competitors, and is now awaiting approval from a Massachusetts court before taking effect. What once seemed a foregone conclusion has become, as the Globe wrote, “one of the most contentious and closely watched hospital expansion pushes in the country.”
In July I argued that the Globe, whose outstanding 2008 reporting on Partners and the Bay State’s stratospheric healthcare costs spawned the attorney general’s investigation, appeared to have lost its vigor in pursuing the story. Instead its coverage had become tepid, workmanlike, and very ho-hum. The paper’s resources seemed misplaced. It devoted more than 3,500 words to a puff piece on Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Andrew Dreyfus, while its Spotlight team, responsible for the earlier series, was doing other stuff.
The Globe’s recent story, published Nov.9, makes up for its earlier weak reporting, and suggests the paper may be getting its mojo back. We’re happy to note that Scott Allen, who worked on the Spotlight series, is back on the case. He and Robert Weisman, who has been covering the deal for most of the year, interviewed more than two dozen people—and while many talked on condition of anonymity, the reporters found that some of the state’s key healthcare players were no longer hesitant speak out. The Rev. Burns Stanfield, president of the Greater Boston Interfaith organizations put it this way, “People are very careful talking about Partners. But once they started talking, they kept talking.”
And while a Globe editor told me over the summer the paper hadn’t yet “looked in depth at” the Health Policy Commission, a little-known state agency, for the recent story the reporters examined the commission’s findings and their impact—to good effect. Here’s one passage from the article:
The Health Policy Commission, created in 2012 to help control Massachusetts’ highest-in-the-nation health costs, found that the Partners acquisitions, if unchecked, would raise costs by nearly $50 million a year for the three largest health insurers alone. Partners disputed those projections, but they clearly registered with Judge Sanders.
“Where I have serious concerns is the impact the settlement has on Massachusetts, on the health care costs for all Massachusetts citizens,” Sanders told a crowded courtroom on Sept. 29.
The article concludes with a kicker quote by Stuart Altman, the commission’s chair, who says he doesn’t know what the outcome of court proceedings will be. “Whatever happens, I think Massachusetts will be better off,” he says. The environment of business as usual in healthcare is gone.”
Is that true—and if so, what will the new era bring? We’ll be relying on more strong coverage from the Globe to find out.
Related content:
Massachusetts Health Reform Archive
The Boston Globe owned the health policy beat once. Where did that tenacity go?
Trudy Lieberman is a longtime contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the lead writer for CJR's Covering the Health Care Fight. She also blogs for Health News Review and the Center for Health Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @Trudy_Lieberman.