Now that Massachusetts officials have stopped Partners HealthCare from growing further in Massachusetts, at least for now, there’s been talk about decoupling the chain’s two flagship hospitals: Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s.
Perhaps, Joan Vennochi, writing in The Boston Globe, ruminates, the two world-famous Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals, which compete with each other even though they are in the same company, can “grow more as independent entities than they can under Partners.”
The MGH-Brigham alliance under Partners did not merge the assets of the two hospitals, which remain financially independent.
David F. Torchiana, M.D., a cardiac surgeon and the chief executive of Partners, said of the idea of breaking up Partners that it “crossed my mind,” although it “takes a lot to dissolve a 2o-year relationship.”