Two Big Nonprofit Hospitals to Join Forces in Mass.

The boards of Boston’s Tufts Medical Center and Lowell General Hospital in Lowell, Mass., have tentatively agreed to unite under a new health care system, the latest deal to shake up the region’s fast-changing medical industry, reports The Boston Globe.

The nonprofit hospitals, each of which has more than 400 beds, would continue to operate independently and maintain their own doctor groups. The deal would create an as-yet-unnamed parent organization that could take in additional health-care providers down the road.

The partners say the pact will preserve low-cost medical services in the region at a time when bigger health networks are snapping up community hospitals. Tufts Medical has lost out to larger entities in acquisition attempts, while Lowell General merged in 2012 with Saints Medical Center, another Lowell-based nonprofit that had spurned a deal with for-profit Steward Health Care System in 2011.