Hurt by falling patient volumes, especially in the area of orthopedic surgery, the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is on track to end its year in red ink on an operating basis for the first time in nearly a decade.
Hospital chief executive officer Tim Walsh said this week that while steps have been taken to beef up orthopedic services, he is projecting an operating deficit of about $750,000. The hospital fiscal year runs from April 1 through March 31.
Robert S. McNamara, the tragic and controversial former Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who was most closely associated with leading the country into the Viet Nam War, died yesterday morning at his home in Washington, D.C., after a long period of failing health.
He was 93 and was a former longtime summer resident of the Vineyard.
Adding another gem to its emerald necklace of properties on Chappaquiddick, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank announced this week that it has purchased 22 acres of native sandplain off Quammox Road. The property includes 550 feet of beachfront on the extreme eastern end of Katama Bay.
The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital ended its fiscal year with a sharp drop in operating profits, although with year-end gains well north of $600,000, the institution remains comfortably in the black, defying predictions early this year of an operating deficit.
And like virtually every person and institution with money invested in stocks and bonds this year, on paper the hospital lost an enormous amount of value — more than $3 million — on its protected endowment monies.
The chairman of the board of trustees for the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is mired in controversy at another hospital in Hackensack, N.J., where he has resigned his position.
John P. Ferguson, the longtime president and chief executive officer at the Hackensack University Medical Center, stepped down last week amid an unfolding scandal and federal corruption investigation.
Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard announced this week that it will join forces with a leading Cape Cod hospice organization, a move that will lead to expanded services including those covered by Medicare, Medicaid and other insurance carriers.
The plan calls for Hospice & Palliative Care of Cape Cod to become affiliated with the Vineyard hospice, which will retain its independence. An independent nonprofit based in Hyannis, Hospice & Palliative Care of Cape Cod is the largest hospice organization on the Cape, with a $12 million annual operating budget.
It is a violation of the Massachusetts Ethics Law for a member of a town community preservation committee who also sits on a private nonprofit board to participate in a decision that grants Community Preservation Act funds to the nonprofit.
This is the opinion of Edgartown town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport, who was recently asked by the town administrator to research the question.
A budding plan to allow two Aquinnah concert promoters to build a summer outdoor performance center at the Gay Head Cliffs has begun to draw more darts than the P.A. Club on a Friday night.
A public hearing was set for last evening and Aquinnah selectmen moved the location to the old town hall because they were expecting a crowd.
Money to rebuild stone walls and jump-start building design for the Middle Line housing project, shared spending on health care access and rodent control, and a $6.6 million annual town budget are the central items that will come before Chilmark voters at their annual town meeting Monday night.
The 32-article warrant reads much like a profile of Chilmark itself: spare and threaded with Yankee thrift. The annual operating budget is a slight decrease from last year, making Chilmark the only town on the Island to see its budget go down instead of up this year.
Scores were released this week for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), the annual testing in commonwealth public schools that measures student performance in math, reading and science.
