Hospital Deal to Aid S. Shore, Officials Say

The Patriot Ledger

WEYMOUTH – South Shore Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have signed a 10-year clinical affiliation agreement that officials say will lead to development of specialized surgical, cardiovascular, cancer, primary care and women’s health services at South Shore in Weymouth.

While South Shore gets the medical expertise necessary to develop new programs, Brigham and Women’s, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital in Boston, gets to place young doctors in a community hospital for part of their training.

The two hospitals already cooperate on several specialty programs in Weymouth, and several surgeons from Brigham and Women’s work full-time at South Shore Hospital. But officials said yesterday that Brigham and Women’s and South Shore will review medical specialties of doctors at the hospitals and unveil new programs in the coming months.

The hospitals said the affiliation agreement is not a merger: There will be no joining of finances or boards of directors, and the hospitals will continue to be accredited separately. The 10-year clinical affiliation can be reviewed after five years.

“The idea of this is to significantly expand programs and the depth of our bench here,” said Paul Taylor, senior vice president at South Shore Hospital. “It’s a clinical affiliation, but it’s a very serious affiliation. It’s not in name only.”

John Fernandez, a vice president at Brigham and Women’s, said the agreement was a natural evolution for the hospital in the Longwood Avenue medical complex in Boston.

“We had one or two programs and we just thought we’d like to do things in a more robust way to benefit the patients of that area.” South Shore Hospital also has a clinical affiliation with Children’s Hospital in Boston for pediatric medicine. Taylor said the agreement with Brigham and Women’s will be similar for adult medicine.

The affiliation with Children’s helped South Shore Hospital establish the only neonatal intensive care unit in the state at a non-teaching hospital. The unit enables the hospital to care for very sick newborns without sending them to Boston.

Fernandez said the affiliation with South Shore Hospital enables his hospital’s medical residents – doctors who are completing their clinical training – to work in a different type of hospital setting.

South Shore Hospital has 284 beds while Brigham and Women’s has 735. The difference in size of the two institutions makes for a different work experience, Fernandez said.

“For our residents, it gives them exposure to a community hospital,” he said. Taylor said South Shore Hospital has no plans to become a teaching hospital. But access to Brigham and Women’s prestigious training program for doctors could prove valuable. Hospital and doctors’ groups say physician recruitment is among the biggest challenges facing the state’s medical system because of Massachusetts’ high housing and malpractice insurance prices. Having young doctors working at South Shore would give the hospital an opportunity to try to convince them to stay in the area.

Julie Jette may be reached at jjette@ledger.com.