Officials from the Medical Faculty Associates are hiring new physicians amid concerns from local government leaders about the practice’s ability to staff a new hospital due to its financial instability.
Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health — a $434 million facility set to be staffed by MFA physicians and operated by Universal Health Services, the owner of GW Hospital — will open April 15 as part of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to combat health disparities in wards 7 and 8. MFA officials said they are working to hire new physicians to staff the hospital after D.C. councilmembers expressed worries that the MFA will be unable to meet the hospital staffing obligations since the enterprise requested late last year to renegotiate its contract due to its financial challenges.
City officials chose UHS to own and operate the Cedar Hill hospital in 2020, including staffing the facility with physicians from the MFA, a group of physicians and faculty from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and physicians at the GW Hospital.
In the original agreement, the MFA pledged to staff the hospital with 160 physicians, the Washington Post reported. Sometime around December 2024, the MFA requested that UHS renegotiate its contract due to financial challenges. The practice has lost $107 million in the last fiscal year.
District and hospital officials held a hearing in December where D.C. councilmembers raised concerns about the MFA’s recent financial losses and Cedar Hill official’s alleged lack of outreach to local health care providers in Ward 8. At the hearing, UHS and Cedar Hill officials indicated that negotiations are ongoing and there is no set date for when the agreement will be final.
MFA spokesperson Anne Banner said the practice continues to “be in discussions” with UHS to ensure the MFA provides services at Cedar Hill on a “cost-neutral basis” by working to hire more physicians to staff the new hospital.
“The MFA is in the process of hiring physicians and advanced practice providers for the Cedar Hill hospital, and we continue to work in coordination with UHS towards the planned opening in April and for the staffing that will be required over subsequent phases,” Banner said in an email.
Wards 7 and 8, which have a majority Black population, have long faced health disparities due to a lack of quality health care centers. Residents of Ward 8’s life expectancy is 15 years lower than those of Ward 3, the area with the highest life expectancy at 87 years. Residents over the age of 40 east of the Anacostia River are four times more likely to face cost and geographic barriers to accessing health care than those other wards, according to AARP.
Bowser has invested in health care infrastructure in Southeast D.C. the past few years to address these disparities, including opening Cedar Hill hospital and moving D.C. Health headquarters to Ward 8.
Banner declined to comment on why the practice requested a renegotiation of the contract. Kimberly Russo, the UHS D.C. region group vice president and the CEO of GW Hospital, said at the December hearing that the MFA was “revising and refining” their professional services agreement “as a result of financial challenges.”
Officials from UHS did not return a request for comment on the current status of the negotiations and what they are looking to change in the contract to ensure the MFA is financially protected.
At-large D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson, who called the December hearing, said in an interview that she initiated the hearing because she was concerned about the Cedar Hill hospital officials not reaching out to community health care providers in wards 7 and 8.
Henderson said since the December hearing, there has been “movement” among Cedar Hill officials regarding community outreach, and the hospital has hired a human resource official to communicate with local health care providers and residents in those wards.
Henderson said she had spoken to health care providers in wards 7 and 8 last year who were not aware that the hospital was opening in the spring. She said the hospital must work to re-establish trust with the communities in those wards that have felt failed by the health care system for years.
“The District government has invested a lot of money into the build of this new facility, and it would be criminal for us to have spent $400 million for folks still not to go to that hospital because they don’t believe that they’re going to receive good care,” Henderson said.
Henderson said at the December hearing that officials from UHS assured her the MFA will be able to staff the hospital, but she doesn’t feel the future revised agreement will address all of the MFA’s financial struggles.
She said the MFA needs to allocate its physicians between GW Hospital in Foggy Bottom and Cedar Hill locations and that UHS and hospital officials may need to build relationships with community providers in wards 7 and 8 to help provide additional staffing if the MFA falls short.
UHS did not return a request for comment on how the MFA will meet its staffing requirements and UHS’s potential outreach to community health providers and residents of wards 7 and 8.
“Do I feel like MFA has enough providers to make that happen? Maybe,” Henderson said. “In some cases, I do feel like they’re going to have to augment some services with community providers who can also be there to help and support.”
Henderson said she doesn’t know when officials will finalize the agreement and that she has reached out to MFA and GW officials since the hearing in December, but they have been “quiet” about sharing their plans with the D.C. Council.
The Cedar Hill hospital will replace United Medical Center, which is in the same location and has faced cuts in patient services and alleged mismanagement. The hospital will also provide maternal health care, which residents east of the Anacostia River have lacked for years.
Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage, who also attended the December hearing, said in an interview that the UHS-MFA partnership to operate the hospital will allow patients to access an “integrated system of care” from Cedar Hill providers and providers at other hospitals that UHS runs.
He said the MFA has assured the city that its financial troubles will not hinder its ability to provide quality care and meet the requirements of its 160-person staffing contract.
“If at some point their financial troubles create a problem three or four or five years out that call into question their ability to continue to provide the professional services at the new hospital, I have tremendous confidence in the management of GW Hospital and at UHS to ensure that we have a highly qualified group of physicians on board and providing this care that the residents of Ward 8 need,” Turnage said.
SMHS Department of Clinical Research and Leadership Director of Equity Maranda Ward said that when District officials were deciding who would operate the hospital in 2020, community members in wards 7 and 8 expressed “concerns” that MFA providers did not have long-standing relationships with the community in those areas.
Ward said some GW faculty including herself have worked with residents of wards 7 and 8, but the University must show it is considering those communities’ concerns by “restoring” relationships and “recognizing any harms of the past.”
“I feel like we just need to do a better job of explaining that so that communities that feel like they just don’t have a relationship or rapport with us can trust that you’re getting high quality care, that we’re not experimenting or training on you,” Ward said.
Salim Adofo — the chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C, a local governing body represents the Ward 8 neighborhoods of Barry Farm, Congress Heights and Douglass — said residents in wards 7 and 8 need a high-quality medical care facility because it is often the case that health emergencies, including giving birth, are too urgent for patients to travel to other hospitals.
“There is no place currently, right now, east of the river for approximately 160,000 people to experience childbirth,” Adofo said.
Adofo said the residents of wards 7 and 8, which consist of mostly minority populations, require health care providers that understand not only their medical needs but their cultural and economic situations, which is why outreach to the community by the hospital is vital.
“We want to make sure that the medical providers are culturally competent and sensitive to the needs of the residents,” Adofo said. “I think it provides for a better healing process and a better overall health experience. And so hopefully, as people begin to hire, they will take that into consideration.”
