Cape Cod Healthcare and outpatient services

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :18/12/2007 05:08:40

With control of both local hospitals, Cape Cod Healthcare is looking to grow in the area of outpatient services, as it keeps local residents in top health.

Written and produced by David Weldon & Thomas Venturo

Visitors to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, generally leave the area with a favorable view of its scenery, its recreation, its hospitality, and its quality of life.

It’s not surprising. The 15 towns that make up “The Cape” have a distinct neighborly charm and a less-hectic pace that makes them seem a bit more timeless than their neighbors just over the Cape Cod Canal.

Other than Long Island, Cape Cod features the largest separated land mass — and population — stretching out into the Atlantic. This distinction encourages local residents to think of themselves as a broader community unto themselves, something they have done as far back as the original landing of the Pilgrims at Provincetown (that’s correct, not Plimoth Rock).

Whether they are from the entrance community of Sandwich, the mid-Cape town of Dennis or — at the extreme outlining point — renowned Provincetown, Cape Coders share a sense of mutual dependence on each other, and separation from the state proper.

This sense of self-reliance also carries to the region’s healthcare network. Most residents rely on local physicians, medical centers and hospitals for their basic care. Cape residents don’t need to cross the canal for much, and tend to venture the hour long drive North to Boston only for highly specialized services.

And that scenario is just fine with administrators at Cape Cod Healthcare, in Hyannis, who are in the enviable position of owning both of the two hospitals that serve the entire Cape.

“The overall market for inpatient services in Barnstable County is approximately 26,000 hospital inpatients per year, and we have 75 percent of that market,” explains Gregory W. Hunt…

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