BOSTON (WHDH) - Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer officially closed Saturday morning, meaning patients will no longer be accepted at the Steward Health Care facilities.
The state is now saying it will work with employees to help them file for unemployment and find new jobs and it will also try to make sure people get continued access to quality healthcare.
Hours before Carney Hospital closed, longtime employees and patients stopped by the facility to say their goodbyes. The facility has been a fixture in Dorchester since 1953.
Narkeya Washington and her coworkers posed for photos and discussed their bankrupt employer, Steward Health Care.
“They came into this because they wanted to make profit. This is all about real estate. It had nothing to do with healthcare. And we’re paying the consequences for it. The effect of it trickled down to the employees. We have nowhere to go,” said Washington, a patient access coordinator at Carney.
The property’s future is in the hands of a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas. The highest bidder could be a real estate developer interested in building a mixed-use project, and not a medical facility as the city wants.
Steward is closing deals to sell four of its other hospitals: Holy Family in Methuen, Holy Family in Haverhill, Morton Hospital in Taunton, and St. Anne’s in Fall River.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)