Tenet Purchases MetroWest Medical Center.

Vanguard Health Systems Inc., the parent company that owns MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham and St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, is being sold.   Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Dallas is buying the Nashville, Tennessee based Vanguard (a national network of 28 hospitals and facilities) for about $1.8 billion.   This is part of what the New York Times reported as part of the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating “giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care.” 

Hopefully, by combining, hospitals can reduce costs and devote more financial resources to investing in patient safety measures like electronic medical records.  In many cases, corporate mergers are good.  They can lead to innovations.   It is important that out-of-state hospitals bring new ideas in patient care in order to better serve the patient population that depends upon that hospital to save lives.   In order to do so, it is important for foreign state hospital systems that operate in numerous states not to be out of touch with the community they serve and not to put profits over safety.   This is one way to reduce the nearly 100,000 death due to preventable medical errors each year.