Funds released; health care foundation is ready to give

After sustaining debilitating cuts in state aid, health care providers in the region are facing an unexpected challenge: devising ways to use a sudden windfall.

The Framingham-based MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation was expected to receive $46.3 million late last week -- the hotly disputed proceeds from the 1996 and 2003 sale of shares in MetroWest Medical Center.

The hospital's former owner, MetroWest Health Inc., has withheld the funds since last April, asking the foundation to reverse a 1999 decision to operate as a private charity. That status, critics argued, limited its grant-making, restricted its ability to accept financial gifts, and required payment of federal taxes.

Last November, through mediation with the state attorney general's office, the two sides resolved their dispute. The foundation agreed to alter its status, and last Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court approved a merger that will dissolve MetroWest Health and transfer its assets to the foundation, said Roger Peloquin, the president of MetroWest Health.

The foundation said it would double its annual giving, and last week's court decision sent local nonprofits scurrying to craft grant applications.

''It's fantastic, at a time when there are so many cuts to essential services," said William J. Taylor, executive director of Advocates Inc., a mental health advocacy group. ''We're not able to provide anywhere near the free care we used to."

Advocates, which has received $300,000 in foundation grants to date, canceled its substance-abuse care and prevention programs last year after it lost $100,000 in state support. It now plans to request additional funds from the foundation, Taylor said.

Marcia Buckminster, director of school health for the Framingham school system, said she was also seeking to share in the wealth. Last year, the foundation awarded the system $50,000 to extend operating hours at a high school health clinic. New funds, she said, could help support uninsured teenagers, including many immigrants, and enhance prenatal care and education for pregnant students.

''We may be able to do more than the hospital has," she said.

The foundation has not yet announced detailed plans to distribute the funds, which doubled its endowment and creates one of the state's largest health care nonprofits. Private consultants, who will recommend new strategies at the foundation's annual meeting on March 11, are not expected to suggest radical changes, said Martin Cohen, the foundation's executive director.

''They're not recommending any left turns or right turns," he said.

Previously, Cohen has suggested that the funds could be put toward building health care facilities or to step in if one of MetroWest Medical Center's two campuses were to close when Tenet Healthcare Corp. sells the hospital, which it hopes to do by the end of the year.

The foundation is considering other changes to its operations, including the possibility of actively recruiting grants applications and undertaking greater research efforts.

''We're going to look for strategic opportunities," Cohen said. ''It puts more responsibility on us to make sure our grant-making is responsible."

The foundation, which receives 100 grant applications each year, provides $1.5 million to about 50 initiatives. It will next solicit grants in March, with health advocates predicting a deluge of requests.

The money was expected to be transferred last week, when MetroWest Health submits documents to the secretary of state's office. Peloquin said trustees planned to resign last Thursday, when the group closed its office on Worcester Road in Framingham. Peloquin said he and his secretary would also be terminated.

''We're in the process of closing the office down," he said.

The merger ends a dispute that cost the foundation more than $100,000 in legal bills and meant MetroWest Health continued spending its $900,000 operating budget, money some said could have been used for health care.

A recent analysis by the health care foundation found that state cuts in 2003 cost the region $3 million in health care programs, after it lost $2 million the previous year.

Yet even with the $46.3 million, the foundation will still be forced to reject critical projects, said Gerard Desilets, director of planning for the South Middlesex Opportunity Council. A former associate commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, Desilets said the state closed the region's only detox center last summer and cut 20 percent of the budget for local domestic violence and rape programs.

''There is a lot of need," he said. ''There will be substantially more requests than dollars available."

Benjamin Gedan can be reached at gedan@globe.com.