Photo: Boston Globe via Getty Images
BOSTON (State House News Service) — Pledging to invest in new staff and expand available mental health care for children, a pair of Boston-area pediatric hospitals are ready to join forces.
Boston Children's Hospital and Franciscan Children's announced Thursday they will close on an affiliation agreement effective July 1, more than a year and a half after they first signaled plans to combine their work.
Leaders of both hospitals said the agreement will make them "sister organizations" better positioned to offer an integrated care system, and they outlined a range of plans for new investments, hiring and care expansions. The deal will bring Franciscan under Boston Children's corporate umbrella, the Children's Medical Center Corporation.
As part of the affiliation, the hospitals will invest more than $500 million to modernize Franciscan's campus in Brighton, which originated in the 1940s. The effort envisions construction of a "state-of-the-art," carbon-neutral building to host a range of mental health and medical rehabilitation services.
That's up significantly from earlier projections -- in October 2021, when the hospitals were previously exploring a merger, the Boston Globe reported that Boston Children's planned to spend at least $40 million to improve the Franciscan campus.
The hospitals said they plan to hire between 150 and 200 new full-time employees by 2030 to improve care for children, and they'll also expand training programs and build out a pipeline to bring more diverse workers into the field.
Together, Boston Children's and Franciscan Children's said they would increase the number of beds available for inpatient services from 98 to 127 and work to nearly double their behavioral health bed capacity.
Providers and policymakers continue to grapple with a mental health care boarding crisis, in which patients languish for days or weeks in emergency departments while waiting for specialized treatment beds to become available.
"We are in the midst of a children's mental health crisis, and it's clear our system simply isn't working for children and families," Boston Children's Hospital President and CEO Kevin Churchwell said in a statement. "It's why we are coming together as one team to act with the urgency this crisis demands. Together we will reshape children's mental health and rehabilitative care through a fully integrated approach focused on improved prevention, identification and treatment of these diseases. And we'll do it while breaking down barriers caused by systemic racism and ensuring that every child has access to care regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender or zip code."
A spokesperson said state regulators have already approved the affiliation.
Some regulators and lawmakers have grown more skeptical of health care mergers in recent years, arguing that larger organizations trigger an increase in costs and spending when they expand into territories served by smaller community organizations.
With an eye on protecting community hospitals, House Speaker Ron Mariano wants to beef up the "determination of need" process used to review proposed expansions and closures, but his plan has not gained traction in the Legislature.
Other steps the two hospitals said they will take as part of their affiliation include expansions to intensive outpatient therapy, partial hospitalization programs and community-and school-based prevention programs.
Declaring that "research is the future of children's mental health" because of poorly understood underlying causes of mental health issues, the hospitals said they would make an undisclosed amount of "sustained investments" in research and hire three or four new clinician scientists.
Franciscan Children's, which describes itself as the region's only pediatric provider of post-acute services to medically complex children, is facing an uptick in the "size and acuity of this vulnerable patient population," the organization wrote in a press release announcing the plans.
The hospital's president and CEO, Joseph Mitchell, said affiliating with Boston Children's will "allow us to better deliver on our mission, expand clinical programs, and modernize our campus."
"We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity together to create a transformative new model of children's behavioral and rehabilitative care, better serving the needs of our community and the children and families we serve," Mitchell said. "We cannot wait to start this new chapter with our partners at Boston Children's Hospital."
Written by Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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