The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital announced this week that it will soon begin to provide anesthesia services as a collaborative venture with its affiliate Massachusetts General Hospital. Beginning in June, anesthesia coverage for both the surgical and maternity departments at the Island hospital will be provided by the Mass General department of anesthesia, critical care and pain medicine. The collaboration will mean enhanced coverage that will allow the Vineyard hospital to manage two surgical emergencies at the same time, a hospital press release said.
A Martha’s Vineyard Hospital plan to create two new large parking lots has residents of the surrounding Oak Bluffs neighborhood on edge over the institution’s continued expansion.
More than four years after the new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was required, as a condition of its expansion, to spend $2 million on community health programs, not one dollar has yet been spent on initiatives not directly connected to the hospital.
Under the terms of approval by the state Department of Public Health, the hospital was supposed to begin distributing the money in January 2006. The five-year timetable for the expenditure meant it all should have been distributed by January 2011.
Some 1,500 lower-income Vineyard residents face the prospect of having to find new health insurance because the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital has determined its current insurer is not directing enough patients to its affiliated hospitals in Boston.
O n Saturday, Feb. 14, we set out in the morning from Chilmark for a shop in town and a Valentine’s Day drive. It was a sunny day though terribly cold and strangely still back in Vineyard Haven on this long winter weekend to mark Presidents’ Day — a great opportunity for Islanders to escape to mainland shops, northern ski slopes, or Bahamian bliss. After a quick grocery shop, my husband Peter and I left town behind and drove past the frozen quiet MV Shipyard, the windswept buildings of the Packer Company, and out along the causeway toward Oak Bluffs.
Health and human service agencies on the Vineyard are already feeling the effects of severe state budget cuts made last week by Gov. Deval Patrick and are bracing for more in the months ahead.
State funding to Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard and Martha’s Vineyard Community Services was slashed in the cuts, while directors at the Island Health Care Rural Clinic in Edgartown and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital were busy this week preparing for spending and hiring freezes.