Council Approves Review of Funding for Cambridge Health Alliance

Disagreements about the Cambridge City Council’s relationship with the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) brought heated debate to the Council’s weekly meeting last night.

Councillor Marjorie C. Decker introduced a proposition requesting a “dollar-to-dollar review” of the funding that the Council provides to CHA, citing CHA’s lack of formal accountability to the Council and its recent decision to remove obstetrician-gynecologist services from three of its 12 neighborhood clinics. The Council approved Decker’s measure with an amendment requiring the city manager to clarify the Council’s arrangement with CHA.

Founded in 1996 from a merger between the city-owned hospitals of Cambridge and Somerville, CHA is a public hospital system that provides patient care and health education at several locations in the northern Boston metropolitan area.

Since its formation 12 years ago, Cambridge has provided CHA with funding, said Cambridge City Councillor Henrietta J. Davis. Currently, the City allots six million dollars to CHA annually.

But Decker said that CHA has not provided adequate information about how it spends this money.

Decker said that the lack of formal oversight of CHA allowed the Alliance to eliminate necessary ob-gyn services from its North Cambridge, Riverside, and Windsor Street clinics earlier this year.

“It’s time for the Council to really wake up and stand up for women, especially low income women who have been losing health care services,” she said.

The cutbacks come at a time when CHA is facing serious budgetary problems. In March, the health care provider cut 9 percent of its workforce, according to the Boston Globe.

Other councillors said that they were not convinced of the need or the usefulness of the proposed measure.

When Councillor Craig A. Kelley suggested that the information Decker sought could be obtained by requesting more detailed records from CHA’s chief executive, Dennis D. Keefe, Decker vociferously disagreed.

“We had to beg the Alliance to come to the committee meetings and care enough to respond to this,” she said.

But Davis said she thought that the City’s agreement with CHA did not require a line-item budget explanation.

Other councillors said they shared Davis’ uncertainty, leading the Council to add the amendment requesting clarification of its arrangement with CHA.

Keefe could not be reached for comment before press time.

–Staff writer Sarah J. Howland can be reached at showland@fas.harvard.edu