Partners HealthCare to be anchor tenant in first office building at Somerville’s Assembly Row
By Robert Weisman
Globe Staff
December 5, 2013 5:19 PM
Partners HealthCare System, the state’s largest hospital and physician organization, will consolidate administrative operations from 14 sites in eastern Massachusetts and move 4,500 non-hospital employees into 650,000 to 700,000 square feet in a new office building scheduled to open at Somerville’s massive Assembly Row development in late 2016.
The move is meant to reduce costs and boost efficiency at a time when many leases at Partners non-hospital sites are scheduled to expire between 2016 and 2018, according to Partners vice president Rich Copp. While sites in Charlestown, Wellesley, Needham, and elsewhere will close, Copp said the Partners corporate headquarters will remain in Boston.
“This is an effort to consolidate the administrative and non-hospital functions,” said Copp, who estimated Partners will save about $10 million a year in the move. “It’s an opportunity to be more effective and it’s part of our system-wide effort to reduce the cost of health care.”
Partners corporate offices, where its top executives work, will continue to be in Boston because the health care system wants to remain close to Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, the academic medical centers that were its founding institutions, Copp said.
