by John Osborn ·
Friday, July 26, 2024
Steward Health announced this morning that it will close the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, a hospital that has served 16 central Massachusetts communities, including Harvard, since 1964.
In a brief statement the company said that in spite of efforts to sell the hospital over the past several months it had received no qualified bids for either the Nashoba Valley hospital or the Carney Hospital in South Boston and will close both on or around Aug. 31. State law, however, requires 120 days notice.
Reaction to the closing has been swift. In a statement issued shortly after Steward’s announcement, Gov. Maura Healey wrote that “the greed and mismanagement” of Ralph de la Torre and Steward were responsible for the closures.
Earlier this week, Healey was quoted as saying that Steward had received bids for all eight Steward hospitals in Massachusetts, implying bids were in hand for Nashoba and Carney. But her statement today gave no hint the state would intervene to keep the two hospitals open, promising instead “ an orderly and regulated closure.” The next step in the process, her statement said, is for the judge overseeing the Steward bankruptcy to approve the company’s motion to close the two facilities.
However, state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who represents Ayer and Harvard, has written to Attorney General Andrea Campbell and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kate Walsh, calling on the commonwealth to seize the assets of “the senior executives involved in plundering the Massachusetts hospitals in the Steward system” and use the money to finance the continued operation of Nashoba and Carney.
In a letter released this morning, Eldridge also urged that Steward Health Care be required to provide a comprehensive plan “to ensure that the patients who received care at Nashoba Valley Medical Center, the staff who work there, and the communities who rely upon the hospital, are able to receive the same care, if the Nashoba Valley Medical Center does indeed close.”
The company should not be allowed to circumvent the state’s requirement of 120 days notice of closing, he said. “I am deeply disappointed that the Commonwealth has allowed Steward to reap huge profits as it operated with virtually no financial oversight in Massachusetts. This is unacceptable.”
Also weighing in on the news was U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee who represents Ayer, Harvard, and other towns in the third district. In a statement released Friday morning she said Steward executives “should be ashamed of what they’ve done to patients and providers here in Massachusetts.” Ralph de la Torre and Steward executives must be held accountable for causing this crisis, she said. “I will be requesting that federal enforcers, including the Department of Justice, immediately investigate Steward’s actions.”
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Nursing Association, Director of Communications David Schildmeier, echoed Eldridge’s concerns, calling on the state and federal governments to ensure the continued operation of both hospitals, “because no community is expendable and closure is not an viable or acceptable option.” In the interim, he said, “we call on the state to enforce its law forbidding hospital closures with less than 120 days’ notice to allow the state time to find a means of preserving these hospitals for the care of these vulnerable communities.”
Nashoba has continued to operate throughout the bankruptcy proceedings underway in Texas, but in her statement today, Gov. Healey said only 11 of Nashoba’s 46 beds were occupied in June, a decline of 35% since January, according to a recent story in the Boston Globe. However, the hospital also operates an emergency room and an ICU, services on which first responders throughout the area depend.
As previously reported by the Press, Nashoba is the second largest employer in Ayer, according to town officials. In fiscal 2024, Medical Properties Trust, the real estate investment company that owns the hospital buildings, paid more than $500,000 in property taxes to the town.
In the meantime, the state has unveiled an online interactive dashboard that according to the Governor’s Friday statement, “lt allows patients to locate nearby hospitals, understand the services available at each location, and view monthly updates on patient volumes and available beds to help residents connect to nearby services.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.