Sometimes, it pays to be number two.

Beth Israel Lahey Health has long been the state’s second-largest hospital system, the second biggest employer, the second most fill-in-the-blank. When compared to Mass General Brigham, owner of Massachusetts’ two biggest hospitals, Beth Israel’s place in the pecking order was always clear.

But Mass General Brigham has faced a number of challenges in recent years, from losing its relationship with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to a unionization campaign by its primary care physicians amid discontent among wide swaths of its doctors. In many ways, Beth Israel has benefited from its competitor’s issues: it’s struck its own collaboration with the renowned Dana-Farber and has recruited dozens of primary care clinicians — one-third of whom came from MGB alone in the last year.

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