Union Hospital focus to shift from surgical beds to psychiatric, primary care

LYNN – Partners HealthCare’s plan to expand psychiatric services in Union Hospital and send 83 inpatient surgical beds to Salem Hospital unleashed criticism Wednesday from elected officials and questions from the Lynnfield Street facility’s neighbors.
The plan, set to unfold over three to four years, requires state approval, and North Shore Medical Center President Robert Norton said Partners is committed to remaining in Lynn.
“Yes, there will continue to be a hospital in Lynn,” he said.
But how the hospital will run and who it will serve is going to change under Partners’ plan.
Norton said psychiatric and “behavioral health” will become Union’s new focus, along with a primary care program built on the physician health management concept developed in the hospital over the last several years.
Norton said the 30 inpatient psychiatric beds now in Union Hospital will increase to more than 100 beds once psychiatry beds now located at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford and Salem Hospital are moved to Lynn.
He said Union Hospital’s emergency room will remain open but surgical beds will be shifted over a three-year period to Salem Hospital.
Norton said the planned changes are driven by Partner’s need to “redefine how we deliver care” partly by consolidating hospital services.
But Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy in a written statement Thursday said the Union Hospital plan “appears to be a thinly-veiled attempt by Partners to put profits before patients.”
“I am confident that my fellow public servants will agree with me that we need to send a loud and clear message that the city of Lynn is united in opposition to this proposal,” she stated.
Kennedy announced she is launching “a petition drive to formally protest the proposal” and indicated she will bring her concerns to the state Attorney General’s office and the Department of Public Health.