Mass General Brigham said Monday that it plans to invest nearly $400 million over the next five years to enhance primary care, citing a shortage of doctors, physician burnout, and demand for care outstripping resources.
Dr. Anne Klibanski, chief executive of the state’s largest health care system, announced the investment in an e-mail to employees, while hundreds of primary care doctors at MGB are voting this month on whether to join a union.
“In order to support our people so they can care for our patients, we must elevate primary care in our system,” Klibanski wrote.
She also announced that the system will create a new position, MGB chief of primary care. The appointee will be a practicing primary care doctor who will oversee strategy and clinical operations and work with frontline clinicians.
Advertisement
Dr. Michael Barnett, a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an organizer behind the effort of doctors to join the Doctors Council, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, said he was “thrilled” by the investment.
“I attribute this entirely to MGB reacting to the threat of the primary care physicians union,” he said. Primary care physicians began voting on May 7, and will continue doing so until May 29.
Barnett, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said it was critical that primary care doctors still vote to join the bargaining unit. Without a union, he said, MGB “will cut whatever’s necessary from primary care as they have done countless times in the past.”
Advertisement
MGB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.