Partners grant to help unify homeless services
There's method to the $2.5 million that Partners HealthCare is giving to the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. The grant will help underwrite the transformation of the old morgue at Massachusetts Avenue and Albany Street into the new headquarters of the homeless program, consolidating its geographically disparate services.
It's the biggest charitable gift ever made by Partners, the parent network of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Mass. General and the homeless initiative have an enduring relationship, stretching more than 20 years, with a clinic for street people inside the hospital.
Treating the homeless can prove daunting -- particularly because after a hospital stay, they have nowhere to go. The homeless program attempted to address that by opening a facility in Jamaica Plain where homeless patients could convalesce after hospital stays. But that center is sagging under too many patients and too little space.
The move to the South End is designed to address that by adding beds, thereby freeing up beds at Mass. General and other hospitals for patients with more-urgent needs. ''It's better for patients, but it's also better for the healthcare system," said Matt Fishman, vice president for community health at Partners.
''You won't have homeless people waiting in hospital beds when they really need the focused, specialized care of a respite unit."
STEPHEN SMITH
Hospital patients praise nurses and doctors, not food
The largest database of patients' opinions about medical care reveals interesting differences between hospitals in Massachusetts and those nationwide.
Massachusetts hospital patients were slightly more satisfied than average, but that doesn't mean they gave high marks across the board. On a scale of 1 to 100, Massachusetts patients scored quality of the food at 73 and noise level in and around their rooms at 72.8 -- essentially giving hospitals C's in these areas. And Massachusetts patients who paid their own way, or who were enrolled in Medicaid, the state/federal insurance program for the poor, were less satisfied than their national counterparts.
But Massachusetts patients seem to like their doctors and nurses. They gave hospitals A's -- and were more satisfied than patients nationally -- when it came to the skill, friendliness, and courtesy of their doctors and nurses.
To conduct the study, Press Ganey Associates, an Indiana research company, surveyed more than 60,000 patients in the state last year and more than 2.3 million patients nationally.
LIZ KOWALCZYK
New migraine center opens
Dr. Carolyn Bernstein, a neurologist at Cambridge Health Alliance and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, is also a migraine sufferer. That is partly what led to her latest venture: a Women's Headache Center in Somerville.
Bernstein, who recently received the Harvard Medical School Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and four other female clinicians from the alliance targeted the center for women because three times more women than men suffer from migraines.
Group members said they designed the center in a way to avoid triggering migraines or causing existing headaches to worsen. Strong smells and bright light can aggravate the pain and nausea, so the waiting room magazines are fragrance-free and the lighting is muted. Caffeine can trigger headaches, so instead of coffee, they've installed a green tea machine.
Neurologists diagnose patients and prescribe medication, but patients can also enroll in yoga classes, support groups, and ''ice therapy" -- putting cold packs on the back of the neck and head. The center is part of a widespread trend in the hospital industry to attract patients, and business, with one-stop shopping.
LIZ KOWALCZYK
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