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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.

“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. 

“It is often the case that whoever has the most cash can buy market share,” said Dr. Eric Dickson, president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health, which has hospitals in the service area where MGB is seeking to expand. “That’s true in any industry, especially when the competition is kind of fighting for survival. That’s when you can use your cash for a knockout blow. That’s what it feels like here.”

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.

When to use blood, and how much to transfuse, is not always a given, said Dr. Vishesh Chhibber, the medical director for the transfusion service at UMass Memorial Health in Worcester.

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.

It joined community partners CENTRO, NewVue Communities, and UMass Memorial Health to host a virtual town hall last month that was open the public and featured a panel discussion and a question-and-answer session, enabling attendees to ask questions about vaccines and getting vaccinated and learn more about the COVID-19 omicron variant surge.

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.