BOSTON – The Federal Emergency Management Agency will be sending more than $6.7 million to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to reimburse Tufts Medical Center for the cost of hiring temporary staff and paying overtime during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The $6,714,459 in Public Assistance grants will reimburse the teaching hospital in Boston affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine for contracting for hiring additional staff and paying overtime to deal with increased patient loads due to the Coronavirus.
The hospital spent $2,399,986 to contract with several different companies to provide 123 medical staff such as registered nurses, medical assistants, and respiratory therapists, as well as 4 translation specialists to accommodate patients with hearing impairments or language barriers, for a total of 29,529 regular hours and 1,567 overtime hours between June and December 2020.
An additional $4,314,473 was spent to pay the hospital’s regular staff for 68,887 emergency overtime hours that were needed to handle the extra workload between March and August 2020.
“FEMA is pleased to be able to assist Tufts Medical Center with these costs,” said FEMA Region 1 Regional Administrator Lori Ehrlich. “Providing resources for our partners on the front lines of the pandemic fight is critical to their success, and our success as a nation.”
FEMA’s Public Assistance program is an essential source of funding for states and communities recovering from a federally declared disaster or emergency.
So far, FEMA has provided almost $1.4 billion in Public Assistance grants to Massachusetts to reimburse the commonwealth for pandemic-related expenses.