Heywood Hospital is looking to join the UMass Memorial Health system, a move that would bring the two-hospital organization into the growing Worcester-based health system.

The two health systems signed a letter of intent to conduct due diligence for a deal, a process the groups said could take up to a year. If the pair sign a definitive agreement, the deal would require Health Policy Commission review.

That’s something Dr. Eric Alper, senior vice president, chief clinical informatics officer and chief quality officer at UMass Memorial Health, is keeping a close eye on. Currently, Worcester, Massachusetts-based UMass takes advantage of private health information exchanges, like Epic’s proprietary Care Everywhere platform. 

“No one expected it to be this bad and last for so long,” said Richard Ellison, MD, an infectious disease specialist at UMass Memorial Medical Center. 

Two years of wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and trying not to catch COVID-19 had a welcome, if unplanned, byproduct: many people caught fewer colds and stomach bugs. But that could soon change. At the end of the month, Massachusetts will no longer require masks in schools and has dropped its recommendation that healthy vaccinated people wear masks indoors. Doctors say that means we should brace ourselves for the return of common infections many people have blissfully dodged for the past two years.

To have a drug like that on hand would be a “game-changer,” said Lawrence Rhein, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester and a specialist in pediatric pulmonology.

Results of the study are also intended to provide clinical evidence to support an application for FDA clearance. Thanh Nguyen, M.D., from Boston Medical Center, Guilherme Dabus, M.D., from Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute and Baptist Neuroscience Institute, and Ajit Puri, M.D., from Umass Memorial Medical Center are the principal investigators of the study.

A phase 1 clinical trial for the Moderna vaccine recently kicked off, said Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, the study's principal investigator and chair of biomedical research for UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Mass.

Rare are the moments a person can later pinpoint as life-changing. But when they happen, they pack a punch.

For Dr. Shlomit Schaal, chair of ophthalmology at UMass Chan Medical School and president of UMass Memorial Medical Group in Worcester, one such moment came by way of attending a mid-career women faculty leadership development seminar hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic could very well have spelled the end of the nonprofit human services agency that I run. Thrive has some of the largest residential programs in the state. We needed PPE, testing and medical care for the individuals with developmental disabilities that we serve and our employees. Our community hospital, UMass Memorial Health-Marlborough Hospital, stepped up in unexpected ways.