The fire chiefs of 13 Central Massachusetts communities formerly served by the shuttered Nashoba Valley Medical Center have asked Gov. Maura Healey for an emergency appropriation of nearly $10 million.
In a letter to Healey dated Dec. 27, the chiefs wrote that the area’s emergency medical services “are on the verge of collapse.” An additional $9.6 million is needed over the next two years, they said, “to stabilize the emergency medical response system of the Nashoba Valley” and to compensate their departments for the unbudgeted overtime and other labor costs they have incurred. Those costs are largely due to the increased distances and times for ambulances and first responders to travel to hospitals in Leominster, Concord, Lowell, or Nashua, New Hampshire.
“This has created a crisis … on multiple levels,” the letter continued: A “troubling scramble” for mutual aid when emergencies occur while town emergency medical services are away on “longer and longer” transports; an imminent financial crisis due to the surging cost of overtime; and “most alarming, the mental health of first responders as they spend more hours on [emergency service vehicles] and with patients who are often sicker because, without a community hospital, they have delayed their care.” (For accounts of the continuing personal impact of the hospital’s closure on health care providers and patients, see “What’s been lost,” which begins on page 6.)
It’s one of the most forceful appeals delivered to the governor since the hospital closed Aug. 31, 2024, by the area’s elected and appointed leaders, signed by 13 fire chiefs, including Harvard’s Rick Sicard and Devens’ Tim Kelley, as well as the president of the firefighters’ union, Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts, a vice president of the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts, and nearly two dozen appointed and elected local officials, including Harvard’s town administrator, Dan Nason.
Relief for towns; money for study
The chiefs proposed that most of the requested money be distributed among the 13 communities they serve to offset their departments’ surging overtime budgets or used as “seed money” to hire and train additional first responders. Many Nashoba Valley towns and cities, including Harvard, are already contemplating Proposition 2½ tax overrides to balance their fiscal 2026 budgets and are in no position, the chiefs say, to pay the added costs of operating without a more centrally located emergency room.
If their request is accepted by the governor and approved by the Legislature, the chiefs propose that each of the 13 towns, including Harvard, receive $350,000 per year for two years. This would allow communities to analyze, plan, and properly staff their periods of high call volume, which have been exacerbated by the NVMC closure, the letter states. “The additional money will enable adequate response levels not only at the local level, but also the regional level where we are experiencing significant growth in housing and development,” the chiefs wrote.
The chiefs proposed to use the remaining half million dollars to conduct an independent study of the Nashoba Valley EMS response system: “There is a critical need to understand and develop appropriate recommendations to further stabilize and strengthen our emergency medical response system,” they wrote. “Some potential outcomes of this study would be creating policies and procedures to share resources such as ambulances, equipment, and personnel.”
“We are bracing ourselves for our first winter without the NVMC,” the chiefs warn in their letter. “EMS crews stretched thin; longer response times; and municipal budgets approaching deficit spending levels. This situation is not sustainable.”
A response provided to the Press by the governor’s office Monday blamed Steward Health Care, former owner of the hospital, for the crisis, but said the Nashoba Valley Working Group appointed by the governor was seeking solutions.
“Our administration recognizes the unacceptable strain that Steward Health Care’s greed and mismanagement have placed on the Nashoba Valley region, including our hardworking first responders,” a spokesperson wrote. “We appreciate the outreach from fire chiefs and local officials and will continue to stay in close communication with them as we anticipate proposing a long-term solution for the community soon,” the statement concluded.
In their letter, the chiefs ask that the $9.6 million be included in the governor’s supplemental budget request for fiscal 2025, the current fiscal year. However, noted the spokesperson, “there is not currently a timeline for the filing of a FY25 supplemental budget.”
Meanwhile, though it has yet to issue a formal report or provide minutes of its activities, the Nashoba Valley Working Group established by the governor last fall continues to meet once a month. First Middlesex state Rep. Margaret Scarsdale, who co-chairs one of its subgroups with Ayer’s town manager, Robert Pontbriand, told the Press this week that her subcommittee is seeking a $500,000 grant of its own to analyze the financial, regulatory, and licensing requirements that must be met to restore some or all of the emergency care services lost when the hospital closed.
The need for those services is backed by the 13 chiefs and by “thousands of interviews” with stakeholders, Scarsdale told the Press. Her committee’s task is to develop a roadmap to get there. “This subcommittee is singularly focused on restoring emergency and ancillary services so every resident in the Nashoba Valley region can once again rely on the life-saving care they deserve.”
