BOSTON (WHDH) - Elected officials promised to ensure continued access to health care and vowed to hold Steward Health Care accountable Monday after the company announced plans to close two hospitals in Massachusetts next month.
Three days after Steward’s announcement, officials including Sen. Ed Markey, Rep. Stephen Lynch, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu gathered outside Carney Hospital in Dorchester alongside union leaders and other community members for Monday’s press conference.
“We are frustrated,” Wu said in her remarks. “And we are angry to be here today.”
Steward operates eight hospitals in Massachusetts. Mired in financial trouble, Steward declared bankruptcy earlier this year and said it would sell all its hospitals in the state.
By Friday of last week, Steward said it was in active negotiations with potential buyers for six hospitals. Steward said it had not found qualified bids for Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, though. As a result, the company said it would close both facilities on or before Aug. 31.
The announcement drew a sharp and immediate response from leaders, patients, and health care workers across the state. As the frustration lingered into a new week, Lynch warned Carney’s closure would “tear a hole in health care network of this part of Boston.”
Carney dates back to 1863. Speaking Monday, Lynch highlighted the hospital’s present-day mental health and psychiatric care.
“The removal of Carney Hospital from that network would be a devastating blow to the mental health of our community,” he said. “…We want a better result.”
Union leaders and lawmakers alike last week highlighted a state law that requires hospitals notify state regulators 120 days before any proposed closure. On Monday, officials again flagged the notice requirement.
“That announcement violates state law, state regulations and federal law,” Lynch said of Steward’s planned closures.
“Just as Steward Health Care has protections in bankruptcy court, we believe the neighborhood has rights, too,” he said.
Markey credited employees across Steward’s hospitals for their work but said “Workers can only do so much when greedy CEOs and corporate executives hiding away on their million dollar yachts act like our health care system is their personal piggy bank.”
Moving forward, he said he would send a letter to the federal court in Texas that is overseeing Steward bankruptcy proceedings.
Markey said he planned to ask for a court mandate that Steward comply with legal requirements surrounding its planned hospital closures.
He said he would call on the court to reduce and restructure Steward’s real estate leases, which have been in place for years since company leaders sold the land Steward hospitals occupy.
Markey said he would also ask private equity and real estate creditors to direct any revenue from the sale of Steward’s six remaining hospitals to Massachusetts’ health care system.
“It is our hospitals and community health care centers that need that revenue,” he said. “Not the billion-dollar real estate and private equity companies waiting to be repaid through the bankruptcy process.”
“We have had enough and we are going to fight you every single step of the way,” Markey said in a message to Steward executives.
Pressley shared a similar message, vowing to work to get care for patients, ensure accountability, and legislate to prevent future situations like the one currently impacting Massachusetts.
“We are going to fight like hell,” she said.
Steward in a recent filing in its bankruptcy case detailed what it described as a $30 million “commitment” from state officials in Massachusetts to support Steward facilities through the coming weeks.
The same filing asked for authority to close Carney and Nashoba Valley and proposed a timeline for closure that would shutter the hospitals by the end of August, as planned.
The State House News Service said a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey confirmed the Healey administration “has committed to advance $30 million to ensure that all of Steward’s hospitals in Massachusetts can continue to operate through the end of August.”
“Because of Steward and [CEO] Ralph de la Torre’s greed and mismanagement, these hospitals are in bankruptcy and starved of the resources needed to keep operating for another month,” the same spokesperson said, according to the news service.
With Steward’s filing in mind, and having heard from elected officials, Carney Hospital employee Alyssa Bartholomew said she was frustrated Monday.
“We need somebody to tell us what the plan is,” she said.
“They’re just hear today to make us feel that they’re in support with us,” said fellow employee Narkeya Washington, referring to the gathering of lawmakers. “But at the end of the day I really, truly feel, Aug. 31 is the end of Carney Hospital.”
Facing unemployment, Bartholomew said “It’s a disgrace how they’re treating us.”
“We have 30 days to figure out our life?” she said.
While some fear it is too late to save Carney, Pressley and other lawmakers said they will still work to prevent the hospital’s closure.
“If this hospital closes, this will cost lives,” Pressley told 7NEWS after wrapping up her initial remarks.
Nurses in attendance agreed, saying many patients who come to Carney are people of color in need of psychiatric and substance abuse services close to home.
“I live in Dorchester, if I call 911 and Milton hospital is right there, they’re not going to take me to Milton,” said one nurse. “They’re going to take you downtown. You’re going to wait. People will die in the emergency room waiting for care. It’s crazy.”
“These are the lives that Steward executives have chosen to endanger in their relentless pursuit of profit,” Pressley said.
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