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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.

WORCESTER, Mass. - COVID-19 cases have been on the rise in Central Massachusetts. 

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.

Heywood Healthcare and UMass Memorial Health have started the process of forming an affiliation that would bring Heywood under the UMass Memorial umbrella.

“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.

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.

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

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.

Results of the study are also intended to provide clinical evidence to support an application for FDA clearance.