BOSTON (WHDH) - Hours before Carney Hospital in Dorchester is set to close, longtime employees and patients stopped by the facility to say their goodbyes.
On Friday morning at Carney Hospital, a city employee put up a sign — a bit prematurely — announcing that the hospital was closed. However, the facility will shut its doors at 7 a.m. Saturday, along with Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer.
Healthcare workers at Carney broke down in tears on their last day of work at the Boston hospital. 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.
Ambulances now come up Dorchester Avenue without stopping. Boston EMS stopped bringing patients to the hospital’s emergency room as of 7 a.m. Friday.
Olivia Isemond came by to retrieve a promotional poster of her grandmother — now retired — who worked as a cafeteria worker at Carney for many years.
“We’re really going to miss this place and it’s a huge loss for everyone,” said Isemond.
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.
“What you would have to build here just to break even on the cost of demolishing this place and the environmental cleanup, you’d have to drop the Seaport right here in Lower. Zoning doesn’t allow for that, I don’t allow for that, the mayor won’t allow for that — there’s a lot of things working against you if that’s what your thoughts are,” said Boston City Councilor John Fitzgerald.
One nurse who’s worked at Carney for 40 years took a photo of the hospital she loves. She said she was too broken up to speak on camera.
The loss of the hospital at 7 a.m. Saturday, along with Nashoba Valley in Ayer, has people feeling like they’re attending a funeral.
“I feel like myself and many other people are in mourning,” said longtime patient Mary Reardon.
The state said it will work to help employees file for unemployment and find new jobs and it will also try to make sure people get continued access to quality healthcare.
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