Heywood Healthcare Leaders Welcome Congresswoman Tsongas for Discussion on Healthcare's Future w

GARDNER, Mass. - Feb. 24, 2017 - PRLog -- Heywood Healthcare hosted Congresswoman Niki Tsongas at Heywood Hospital in Gardner on Thursday, February 23rd for a frank discussion on how the repeal or replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could impact healthcare in the North Central and North Quabbin Regions.

"I have felt, as a strong supporter of the ACA, as someone who was able to vote for it, that we needed to hear from people and get their stories of how they have benefited from it and what the problems have been," Tsongas stated as she addressed hospital administration, physicians and leaders of local health care partners. Tsongas stated her goal was to learn how the ACA helped Heywood Healthcare and its partners provide care to patients and communities and their concern if it's repealed.

Heywood Healthcare President and CEO Win Brown pointed out that the ACA has provided financial benefits for the hospital.

"With more and more residents having access to health insurance, we as a healthcare system have been able to reduce our free and reduced care by half over the past five years. This lessens the financial burden we carry as a community-owned health care system, allowing us to grow, expand and offer other needed services," said Brown. "We have some very serious healthcare needs in our region and our primary goal is to continue to provide high-quality care locally in a cost-effective manner."

Heywood Healthcare leadership shared many stories about how both Athol and Heywood Hospitals have been able to expand medical and behavioral health services to local residents and in area schools, and all agreed that the prospect of a future without the assistance of federal funding for health care would impact many in the region.

Heywood Healthcare Vice President for Community Health Rebecca Bialecki highlighted that repealing the health-care legislation would be a blow to staving off the opioid epidemic. "Today, young adults from middle-class families are the new face of addiction. It often starts as a result of injury, becomes a prescription dependence on opiates to facilitate a speedy return to school or work, then quickly spirals to more affordable opiates like heroin," stated Bialecki. "Many facets of the ACA have been critical to the treatment of these young people who do not have their own insurance or are covered by their parents' insurance," she continued. "We're concerned that if this coverage was to be eliminated, many of these people would be left stranded without any treatment access at all."

Also in attendance was GVNA Healthcare, Inc. President and CEO Elaine Fluet, who shared her organization's belief of the importance of expanding Medicaid coverage and noted most pressing concerns of her and her staff are the new pre-claim review initiative by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services becoming costly and ineffective.

"Collecting documentation for pre-claim review on every case redirects our nursing staff away from patient care and threatens the ability of the VNA to respond in a timely fashion to hospital referrals," she said.

Pediatrician and Medical Director for Heywood Medical Group, Sari Miettinen, MD, stated the ACA has had a major impact on the way she practices medicine, referring to the now 95 percent of children in the country who currently have access to health insurance and that the increase in federal funding has allowed providers to track community health issues and improve preventative-care services, vaccination rates, and manage chronic diseases in children, including ADHD, obesity, and asthma.

"The Affordable Care Act has allowed us as providers to implement patient-centered medical homes, population health management, and continuous quality improvement in our practices, so we are not just treating the patient as a person, but also looking at our entire patient population," she said.

Although Congresswoman Tsongas shared many concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the ACA moving forward, she shared her belief that members of the Republican Party are now realizing that repeal without replacing would not best serve their constituents and she urged those present to continue to weigh in on the conversation surrounding the ACA.

"Change is coming," Tsongas said in closing. "We're just going to have to stay in touch on what that change means."

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About Heywood Hospital
A member of the Heywood Healthcare system, Heywood Hospital is a 134-bed acute care hospital in Gardner, MA, which provides a broad range of high quality medical, surgical, obstetrical, pediatric and behavioral health services on an inpatient and outpatient basis. The hospital's Centers of Excellence include the Watkins Center for Emergency and Acute Care; the LaChance Maternity Center; the Diabetes Center; and the Heywood Heart and Vascular Center, an affiliate of the Heart and Vascular Center of Excellence at UMass Memorial Health Care.

About Heywood Healthcare
Heywood Healthcare is an independent, community-owned healthcare system serving north central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. It is comprised of Heywood Hospital, a non-profit, 134-bed acute-care hospital in Gardner, MA; Athol Hospital, a 25-bed not-for-profit, Critical Access Hospital in Athol, MA; the Quabbin Retreat in Petersham, MA; Heywood Medical Group with primary care physicians and specialists located throughout the region. The organization includes six satellite facilities in MA; Heywood Rehabilitation Center and Heywood Urgent Care in Gardner; West River Health Center in Orange; Winchendon Health Center and Murdock School-based Health Center in Winchendon and The Quabbin Retreat in Petersham; Heywood Charitable Foundation; and the North Quabbin Community Coalition, an affiliate organization.