Protests continue against closing of Nashoba hospital; end-of-week shutdown appears certain

With few days remaining before this weekend’s scheduled shuttering of Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, concerned hospital staff and residents have ramped up their protests, holding rallies this week at the hospital and State House in Boston, and calling on Gov. Maura Healey and her administration to stop the closure of a facility that advocates say is central to the area’s emergency care system.

The hospital’s operator, Texas-based Steward Health Care, has filed for bankruptcy in Texas and says it will close the hospital on Aug. 31, at 7 a.m.

On Wednesday morning, as this story was being written, Saturday’s closing seemed inevitable, in spite of a request by the bankruptcy court’s patient advocate Suzanne Koenig that the closing to be delayed 30 days.

Staffers report the hospital is largely empty except for its emergency room, which will remain staffed and operating until Saturday morning.

Monica Gill, an operating room recovery nurse, said there were two patients in the intensive care unit—soon to be transferred—but none in the acute care or geriatric psychiatry units. She said she had been told that after 7 a.m. Saturday the building would be locked up with only security guards in the facility for up to 45 days. According to Gill and others, no medical staff have been asked to remain. “It’s only housekeeping and security,” said one.

The last surgery was performed Friday, Aug. 23, according to chief surgeon Paul Harasimowicz. Over the next few days, he said in a text, the hospital will be stripped of its equipment, much of it shipped to the Steward hospitals that hope to continue under new owners. On Monday, however, the sales hearing that will transfer ownership of those hospitals was postponed for a sixth time, until Sept. 4.

Patient advocate calls for 30-day delay.

In a 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.

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 to be stationed at Nashoba’s emergency entrance for at least seven days after the hospital closes so that if patients unaware of the closure come to the hospital, paramedics can do their best to stabilize and transport them safely to another.

As of Tuesday morning there was no public response to the request from the judge, the state, or Steward’s debtors. However, the state’s Department of Health and Steward Health Care separately have continued to wrangle over the details of Steward’s closure plan for Nashoba.

For example, in its Aug. 20 review of Steward’s plan, the DPH director of licensing, Stephen Davis, asked Steward to confirm that a standby ambulance would be available at Nashoba for seven days. In his Aug. 24 reply, Octavio Diaz, president of Steward’s North Division, committed to 48 hours only, prompting Davis to write in a response yesterday that the DPH expects Steward to provide an ambulance for seven days “and to explain what assistance it will provide area emergency services as they adapt to loss of the hospital.”

Can there be life after closure?

Meanwhile, Nashoba Valley’s state legislators say that while Steward Health Care claims to have received no qualified bids for Nashoba Valley Medical Center, conversations with potential operators and philanthropic donors are continuing. “We need a bidder to step forward,” state Sen. Jamie Eldridge told the Press Monday, but said he did not expect further progress until September after Nashoba closes.

Several Nashoba hospital health care workers told the Press they were optimistic the hospital would reopen. ER nurse Audra Sprague said she believed that the state realized it had made a mistake, “that [Nashoba hospital] is essential and they can’t close it.” Sprague, who is also the Massachusetts Nurses Association’s shop steward for the hospital, said that even after the closing it would be important for the public to keep pressure on the Healey administration and the Legislature, “so they don’t think, ‘Oh, nothing happened. It was fine. They got over it.’”

State Rep. Margaret Scarsdale, who represents towns north and west of Ayer, including Groton and Pepperell, said she thought the Aug. 15 public hearing held in Devens by the Department of Public Health had “shed new light” on what the hospital means for the region, though she could not comment on behind-the-scenes negotiations.

The Worcester Business Journal reported Monday that an executive at 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 said that while the hospital “recognized 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,” it had no plans to submit a bid for any of Steward Health Care’s hospitals. However, the statement added, “We are committed to working with the state to maintain access to high-quality, affordable health care services.”

The Massachusetts Nurses Association said Tuesday, however, that an urgent care center 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.”

“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,” the number that will be lost with the closing of Nashoba.

Protests continue

Hundreds of health care workers, their families, legislators, and residents gathered at the hospital Monday evening, Aug. 26, to protest its closing, forming a human chain around its buildings linked by lengths of red ribbon, the chosen symbol and color of Save Nashoba, Save Lives, the event’s organizer. Many held hand-lettered and printed signs reading “Save Nashoba, Save Lives” and wore red T-shirts.

Some of the evening’s frustration and anger were directed at Healey, with signs reading “No hospital, no Healey,” a hint at the potential political fallout of the hospital’s closing. There were chants of “Where’s Healey?” Ayer Select Board member Jannice Livingston, speaking to those gathered in front of the hospital, said that not one of the many letters and resolutions sent to the governor by nine select boards and several boards of health had been answered or acknowledged by either the administration or the Department of Health. “She has ignored us; how dare she! … We matter; our hospital matters.”

Sprague, the ER nurse and one of the event’s organizers, said that the past weekend had been busy. Finding places to transfer patients had required calls to as many as nine hospitals, she said, including Athol, a distance of 40 miles. “I’ve never transferred a patient to Athol,” she said.

Another rally in support of Nashoba Valley Medical Center was scheduled to be held at the State House in Boston Wednesday morning at 10 a.m.

Editor’s note: This is a rapidly developing story. Watch for updates here at the Harvard Press website.