Steward Health Care System announced today that it will be closing Quincy Medical Center by the end of the year. Steward plans to replace the financially struggling 196-bed hospital with an outpatient urgent care center. "While Quincy Medical Center earns top quality and safety ratings, competition from Boston-area medical centers, significant cuts to Medicare reimbursements, continued Medicaid underfunding, continued rate disparity, and precipitously declining inpatient volume have made QMC unsustainable," Dr. Mark Girard, president of Steward Hospitals, a for-profit company, said in a statement. "On an average day, only one fifth of all beds are occupied and it has become abundantly clear that local residents no longer seek inpatient services from Quincy Medical Center."
