by John Osborn ·
Friday, October 25, 2024
Corrected and updated October 25, 2024
Gov. Maura Healey traveled to Ayer Town Hall Tuesday morning to attend a meeting of the group tasked by her administration with rebuilding the emergency services and regional health care system disrupted by Steward Health Care when the company shuttered Nashoba Valley Medical Center in August. It was Healey’s first visit to the area since Steward filed for bankruptcy in January.
Local officials have complained that Healey and her administration have been too focused on hospitals in eastern Massachusetts and have failed to recognize the disruption to emergency and health care services that the closure of Nashoba hospital would bring to the 17 rural towns, including Harvard, that depended on it.
The meeting was private and lasted more than 90 minutes, well past its one-hour deadline. More than 30 attendees, members of the working group as well as other state officials, packed into a small conference room. Among those present were U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, and Commissioner of the Department of Public Health Robbie Goldstein. Participants were barred from disclosing any of the information or discussions that took place.
In a brief interview outside Ayer Town Hall Tuesday afternoon Healey once again blamed the “greed and mismanagement of Steward Health Care and its CEO Ralph de la Torre” for the problems confronting Nashoba and other former Steward-operated hospitals in Massachusetts.
“From the beginning we’ve been facing a really difficult situation,” she said. “We have focused our efforts on doing all we can to save jobs, protect patients, check people’s access to health care. We did not have a hospital operator come forward ready to take over the [Nashoba] hospital, but I didn’t want to let that be the end, and that’s why I convened this working group that I had the chance to sit with today.”
The closure of Nashoba deprived the 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, labs—and a helipad. Harvard patients with a medical emergency are now transported to Emerson Hospital in Concord or UMass Memorial in Leominster
The 33-member Nashoba Valley Working Group was assembled earlier this month “to “stabilize and revitalize” health care in the Nashoba Valley region,” according to the Oct. 8 press release announcing its formation. Its members include hospital executives and health care providers, fire chiefs, community leaders, and elected officials. The group has been meeting weekly; Tuesday’s meeting was its third, Robert Pontbriand, Ayer’s town manager and the group’s appointed co-chair, told the Press. According to other sources, Healey made the decision to attend today’s meeting late last week, but chose not to make the visit public.
“It’s a working group and we’re going to continue to work on what it is that this community needs—this area needs—and what’s the best way to devise delivery of care.” She added, “It’s going to take the kind of teamwork and collaboration that was in the room this morning.”
Concerning the size and diversity of the group, Healey said it was important to have all the stakeholders in the region represented. She added that as someone who grew up in a rural community—Hampton Falls, New Hampshire—she understands the concerns and the needs of the affected towns. “We want to work to do all that we can to make something better out of what has been a horrible situation.”
Did the group have a deadline? “However long it takes,” said Healey as she ducked into the SUV waiting outside Ayer Town Hall to whisk her to a meeting with first responders in Pepperell arranged by their state representative, Margaret Scarsdale..
According to state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who is a member of the working group and represents Harvard and Ayer, members have been focused on understanding the gaps in health care opened by the loss of Nashoba. “It’s been very helpful, but you know, we still don’t have any action items,” he said. “I didn’t expect we’d have them by now, but we need to have them.” Eldridge said that area legislators remain committed to bringing a hospital back.
In an interview with the Press this week, Scarsdale—who represents a portion of Ayer as well as Groton, Pepperell, Townsend, Lunenburg, and portions of Dunstable— expressed a similar position. She said she had gathered a dozen stakeholders from the area in mid-August—well before the working group was convened—to advocate for keeping the hospital open and finding a way to make it happen. That group is continuing to meet, she said, and has not given up its quest to reopen Nashoba. The members are convinced, she said, that “emergency services have to be stood back up."
Editor's note: This article has been corrected and updated. The month in which Steward Health Care filed for bankruptcy was May, not January.