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Following is the first in a continuing series of articles from MIT Medical. Future pieces will address subjects such as new facilities, medical research, and other contemporary medical issues. -Ed.
Adapting to change
The Institute established what we now call MIT Medical nearly a century ago to provide high quality medical care for the MIT community. In 1904, this care consisted of several annual lectures on "hygiene," regular measurements of students' heights and weights, and prescriptions of "gymnastics training" to patients with poor posture.
By the early 1950s, MIT's "medical service" had grown to 11 medical specialties: internal medicine, surgery, psychiatry, neurology, dental, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, radiology, occupational medicine, dermatology, and a laboratory. The charge for a consultation with a specialist was $5.
MIT Medical had become an excellent health service, but it had a couple of drawbacks. Although it provided care for the entire community, its main focus was on student health care. This focus provided too small a patient population to offer patients the wide range of medical specialties typical of good hospitals or to give patients much choice of providers within a particular specialty.
A bold venture
In the summer of 1973, MIT Medical embarked on a bold new venture, creating the MIT Health Plan - a prepaid, comprehensive health care plan that not only provided treatment for health problems, but, for the first time, covered preventive care as well.
The MIT Health Plan was one of the very first health maintenance organizations in the Boston area. This "model plan," open to MIT faculty, staff, employees, and their families, was first introduced as a three-year experiment limited to 1,000 families.
The MIT Health Plan proved very popular, quickly reaching its 1,000-family limit and continuing to grow in the years since. Today more MIT employees (46 percent) choose one of the MIT Health Plans than any other plan offered at MIT, including about 67 percent of the Institute's faculty.
More high quality services
Adding MIT employees and their families to the patient base has allowed MIT Medical to offer more high quality services to the Institute community:
Changing demography
In April 1974, the first issue of the MIT Health Plan Newsletter reported 1,038 subscribers with a total membership, including family members, of 2,653. Two-thirds of the contracts were family contracts, with membership evenly divided between women and men.
In 1999, the Traditional and Flexible MIT Health Plans together have about 4,500 subscribers with a total membership, including family members, of about 8700. About 44 percent of the contracts are family contracts, with membership still evenly divided between women and men.
What's behind the smaller percentage of family contracts? Patient feedback has consistently ranked MIT Medical's Pediatrics Service and its relationship with Boston's Children's Hospital as one of the very best things about MIT Medical, so it's probably not families looking for better care for their children. But does geography provide an answer?
Geographic realities
In 1974, although MIT Health Plan members lived in 92 different communities, the largest number (18 percent of total membership) lived in Cambridge, with another 43 percent living in Arlington, Belmont, Brookline, Lexington, Newton, Somerville, and Watertown.
Today fewer MIT employees can afford to live in Cambridge or nearby, which makes receiving care at a single Cambridge location less convenient, particularly for employees with families. In addition, the approximately 2,400 MIT employees at Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington have been asking for health care closer to work and home.
Data from 1988 and 1995 MIT Health Plan zip code analyses of where MIT campus and Lincoln Laboratory employees live, show that most benefits-eligible employees are clustered in the Boston/Cambridge area and in the northwest corridor between routes 128 and 495 from the Mass Pike to 93 north.
Lexington facility to open in September
That's why in the fall of 1999 MIT Medical will open a new health care center on the campus of Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, open to the entire MIT community, including family members. MIT Medical/ Lexington will provide high quality internal medicine and pediatric care during regular weekday business hours, with specialty and after hours care continuing to be provided at MIT Medical/ Cambridge.
The new Lexington center will provide convenient medical services for Lincoln Laboratory employees and their families as well as for the many campus employees whose families live closer to Lexington than to Cambridge.
Construction is well underway, and at this writing is on schedule for a September 1999 opening. To be added to the mailing list for information updates, send your name and address (e-mail, office, and/or home) to <health@mit.edu> or MIT Medical, 77 Mass. Ave. E23-308, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, or call 617/ 253-1322. More information will be available later this summer.
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