Hundreds of health care workers and their families, area leaders, and residents gathered at Nashoba Valley Medical Center Monday evening, forming a human chain around the Steward-operated facility and calling on Gov. Maura Healey and the state to keep it open. Texas-based Steward Health Care has filed for bankruptcy and said it will close the hospital in four days, on Aug. 31 at 7 a.m.
Earlier that day, court-appointed patient advocate Suzanne Koenig called for the closing to be delayed another 30 days and for stationing an ambulance at the hospital.
In a supplemental report filed Monday in United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas Houston, Koenig wrote that the “abrupt closure” of Nashoba will extend the time needed by emergency responders in Ayer to transport patients to more distant hospitals from five to 30 minutes. “This increased travel time will effectively remove EMS personnel from service for an additional 45 minutes during the return trip to the community,” Koenig wrote.
In addition to limiting the availability of EMS personnel, she observed that communities are not staffed or equipped to absorb the former Nashoba patients. “This toxic combination of delayed EMS response times and overtaxed ERs will lead to dire results for patients needing emergency care,” Koenig said.
Health care workers and others protesting the closure of Nashoba Valley Medical Center surround the hospital during a rally, Aug. 26. (Photo by Robert Curran)
In her filing, Koenig asked Steward’s debtors and the commonwealth of Massachusetts to delay the closing by 30 days. She said if keeping the ER open is not possible due to staffing and financial constraints, money should be set aside to pay for an ambulance at Nashoba’s emergency entrance for at least seven days after closing the hospital so that if patients are unaware of the closure and come to the hospital the paramedics can do their best to stabilize and transport them safely to another. As of Tuesday morning there was no response from the judge, the state, or Steward’s debtors.
Meanwhile, the Worcester Business Journal reported Monday that Worcester-based UMass Memorial Health had floated the idea of converting Nashoba’s emergency room for use as an urgent care center to relieve the anticipated increase in patients at UMass Memorial’s Leominster hospital.
Asked for comment, a UMass Memorial Health spokesperson provided the Press with the following statement.
“We recognize the far-reaching impacts that the closure of any of Steward’s hospitals could have on patient access to essential services in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While we do not have any plans to submit a bid for one of Steward Health Care’s hospitals, we are committed to working with the state to maintain access to high-quality, affordable health care services.”
The Massachusetts Nurses Association was quick to react to the idea of an urgent care facility, stating Tuesday that it was “not a solution to this crisis and will not address what the community, local officials, first responders, physicians and nurses testified to at the DPH public hearing last week, which is that the 155,000 residents currently served by a full service hospital deserve a full service hospital.” The statement concluded, “An urgent care center can’t provide emergency care, a skilled nursing facility can’t provide acute care, and a skilled nursing facility can’t replace 20 desperately needed psychiatric beds.”
Yesterday’s demonstration drew hundreds of participants who surrounded the medical center’s buildings, holding signs and connected by hand-held red ribbons distributed by organizers.
Nashoba staff interviewed by the Press reported that the hospital was mostly vacant and its patients transferred elsewhere.
Audra Sprague, an emergency room nurse and one of the event’s organizers, said her department was no longer admitting patients. There are nurses and a doctor on duty in the ER for every shift, she said, but all they could do was transfer incoming patients elsewhere. The past weekend had been busy, and at one point finding places to transfer incoming patients had required calls to as many as nine hospitals, she said. There were no plans to staff the emergency room after it closed, nor for an ambulance to be stationed by the emergency room entrance, Sprague said.
Another rally in support of Nashoba Valley Medical Center will be held at the State House in Boston Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. A bus will leave from Ayer at 8:30 a.m.
Editor’s note: This is a rapidly developing story. Watch for updates here at the Harvard Press website.
