Cape Cod Healthcare partners with Beth Israel Lahey Health on services

Cape Cod Healthcare officials announced Tuesday that they have entered into a clinical affiliation with health care giant Beth Israel Lahey Health to expand access to comprehensive care for Cape residents and visitors.

“We will continue to be 100% locally governed,” Cape Cod Healthcare President and CEO Michael K. Lauf said in an interview.

He said Cape Cod Healthcare, the parent company of Cape Cod and Falmouth hospitals, is committed to keeping “this system independent and keeping our market well served.”

As part of the clinical affiliation, which still requires regulatory approval, Cape Cod Healthcare and BILH will work together to recruit 10 primary care physicians in the next two years, Lauf said.

“We’re collaborating. We’re exploring. We will collectively bring more primary care to the Cape. Primary care will be a key focus for Cape Cod Healthcare,” he said.

Also as part of the affiliation, BILH will provide cardiac surgeons in place of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which has partnered with Cape Cod Hospital’s open-heart program since its inception in 2002.

Lauf said the goal is to provide a “seamless overlap” of cardiac surgery services as the program transitions to BILH from the Brigham, which itself falls under the umbrella of competing health care giant Mass General Brigham.

New four-story tower at Cape Cod Hospital: Cape Cod Healthcare moves ahead with plans for future

Cardiac surgery will begin transitioning to a BILH service in April, Lauf said in a statement to Cape Cod Healthcare physicians and staff.

In an interview, he said Brigham and Women's has been given notice of termination.

The clinical affiliation also will bring BILH medical residents through rotations on Cape Cod, Lauf said. He said Cape Cod Healthcare will continue to work with UMass Medical School to bring medical students to the Cape and with Boston University Medical School to bring surgical residents to Cape hospitals.

The health care system will maintain its relationships and affiliations with Boston Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Care Collaborative, Steward Health Care Network and Cape Cod Community College, Lauf said.

Cape Cod Hospitalto expand outpatient COVID antibody treatments with new infusion center

He said Cape Cod Healthcare is not changing ownership or assets as part of the new affiliation with BILH.

“We recognize that strategic partners are sometimes necessary to fulfill our mission,” Lauf said in his message to staff and physicians.

The partnership with BILH “will serve as a catalyst for the development of joint clinical programs at CCHC and will expand access to coordinated care across the region,” he said.

Lauf said “BILH will be our preferred provider for those services we are unable to provide here,” but patient and physician choice will be honored.

So much in health care is changing that going “entirely alone without a clinical partner was not in our best interest,” Lauf said in the interview.

Cape Cod hospitals: Visitors face restrictions as COVID-19 surges. Here's what you need to know.

He said all current contracts with primary care physicians will remain the same.

What the future looks like, with the recruitment of physicians, “remains to be seen,” Lauf said.

Elsa Pearson, policy director at the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center at VA Boston Healthcare System, said it makes sense for smaller health care systems to refer services out.

“But a preset clinical agreement will likely financially benefit the bigger entity, first and foremost,” Pearson said.

“Overall, I understand CCHC’s interest in partnering with a big name. It provides brand recognition and some peace of mind. But, either way, it also gives more market power to the bigger entity,” she said.

Beth Israel Lahey Health calls itself an “integrated health system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals,” with more than 4,800 physicians and 36,000 employees, according to the release on the new affiliation.

When it was created in March 2019 from the merger of Lahey Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, BILH billed itself as the second-largest health care system in the state.

BILH recently took the Joslin Diabetes Center under its umbrella and counts the former Jordan Hospital, now Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth, among its hospitals.

Wear a mask indoors?: A doctor group says yes as Cape Cod towns reconsider advisories

Dr. Kevin Tabb, president and CEO of Beth Israel Lahey Health, said BILH is honored to partner with Cape Cod Healthcare and build on its legacy of offering high quality care to residents and visitors for more than 100 years.

“This affiliation reflects our shared commitment to expanding access to extraordinary care in community settings and will serve as a catalyst for the development of joint clinical programs at CCHC and expand access to comprehensive coordinated care across eastern Massachusetts,” Tabb said.

The new clinical affiliation needs to be approved by the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, state attorney general and the state Department of Public Health, Lauf said.

He said he expects to see the affiliation formally approved in the next 60 to 90 days.

“We’re hopeful the regulators will see the value in this proposal very much the way we do,” Lauf said.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod Healthcare joins affiliation with Beth Israel Lahey Health