by John Osborn ·
Friday, October 4, 2024
After weeks of silence following the closing of the Nashoba Valley Medical Center, the Healey-Driscoll administration announced last week that it will convene a working group to “stabilize and revitalize” health care in the Nashoba Valley region. A second group will be convened to deal with problems created by the closing of Carney Hospital in Dorchester.
The administration also informed eight towns affected by Nashoba’s closing, including Harvard, that they can apply for $250,000 grants to purchase additional equipment and supplies to defray the cost of transporting patients to more distant and overcrowded emergency rooms.
Nashoba Valley Medical Center and Carney Hospital closed Aug. 31 after their operator, Steward Health Care, said it was unable to find a qualified bidder to buy them.
The closure of Nashoba deprived the 16 central Massachusetts towns it served of an emergency room that treated as many as 16,000 patients a year, plus 46 inpatient beds, six intensive care unit (ICU) beds, five pediatric beds, a 20-bed geriatric psychiatric unit—and a helipad. Harvard patients with a medical emergency are now transported to Emerson Hospital in Concord or UMass Memorial in Leominster.
The Nashoba Valley working group will be chaired by Robert Pontbriand, Ayer’s town manager and an outspoken advocate for the hospital, and by Joanne Marqusee, assistant secretary in the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. The announcement states that its members will include representatives of area hospitals, community health centers, physicians, public health agencies, labor unions, emergency service providers, community leaders, and elected and local government officials.
“Using data, community feedback, and input from key stakeholders in each community, the working groups will bring recommendations to state and local officials to promote equitable access to care,” the announcement said. Harvard Town Administrator Dan Nason told the Press last week that he had learned of plans for a working group three weeks ago through his contacts within the office of U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan. As of Tuesday this week, however, he had received no further information on when the group would meet or who would be included.
Pontbriand, the committee co-chair, referred queries by the Press to a spokesperson in the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, who did not respond to queries in time for this publication. A spokesman for state Rep. Dan Sena, who represents Harvard, said he had been told the working group’s meetings would be held “behind closed doors.”
Separately, the state Department of Public Health has notified the emergency services of Ayer, Groton, Harvard, Littleton, Pepperell, Shirley, Townsend, and the Devens Regional Enterprise Zone that they are eligible to apply for $250,000 grants “to acquire and upgrade ambulances and emergency medical vehicles, emergency medical equipment, life support devices, and related maintenance equipment.”
The intended purpose of the grants is “to lessen the impact of the closing of Nashoba Valley Medical Center, and to assist in mitigating the longer transport and back-in-service times these EMS services now face,” said a letter sent to area legislators by the Department of Public Health several days ago. The letter said the agency has identified $2 million in state money to use for that purpose.
Nason said he was notified of the grants late last week and immediately forwarded the information to Harvard’s fire and ambulance department. He said Harvard can use the money and will apply for it.
In a phone conversation last Thursday, Harvard’s state Sen. Jamie Eldridge confirmed that he and Rep. Sena would participate in the working group, along with other area legislators, including state Sen. John Cronin and state Rep. Margaret Scarsdale.
Eldridge described the formation of a working group as a positive action by the governor. But he noted that the purpose of the working group was to address the gaps in health care caused by the hospital closing and to rethink health care access in the Nashoba Valley region—not the reopening of the empty hospital.
“I do want to make it clear,” Eldridge said, “just speaking for myself, separate from the working group, that I continue to advocate and do outreach to find a bidder to bring back the hospital.” So far, he said, no bids have been submitted and the vacant hospital buildings and grounds now belong to the real estate group Apollo Global Management.
Sena echoed Eldridge’s remarks. “The working group’s goal is to address the health care gaps in our region, and I’m happy to work alongside the team to do so. However, I want to emphasize that separately from the working group, I plan to continue trying to find a qualified bidder that can reopen our community hospital.”
Not every member of the Facebook group Save Nashoba Save Lives, a 2,900-member group that advocates reopening the hospital, was pleased with last week’s news. Wrote one: “I am now starting to wonder if all our politicians have given up on NVMC. Forming committees where reopening the hospital is not the priority is useless and just more … talk from people we elect to help us with ‘easy access to great healthcare.’ Mr. Eldridge, we need NVMC, not committees that do not have the people’s welfare as the primary focus.”
Wrote another: “I would say to give these few on this new committee a chance; we will know if they have a chance of success after one to two meetings. We really do not have any other options, unfortunately.”
To read the full text of the governor’s announcement, go to www.mass.gov/news/healey-driscoll-administration-announces-working-groups-focused-on-ensuring-health-care-in-communities-impacted-by-steward-closures