'There’s some relief': Medical workers cheer reopening of Brockton hospital after fire

Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital opens its doors on Tuesday, 18 months after a destructive 10-alarm fire caused the evacuation of patients and the hospital’s sudden closure.

The long-awaited reopening is expected to ease stress on the area’s other medical facilities, which have grappled with higher-than-usual crowding since the February 2023 blaze broke out in Brockton Hospital's electrical room.

Initially, Brockton Hospital is opening 100 beds for patients with medical and surgical conditions, along with the critical care unit and the emergency department, chief executive Robert Haffey said. The maternity unit is on track to open in September, with the remaining services and beds — for a total of 180 — scheduled to open by the end of the year or early 2025.

The Aug. 13 reopening is months later than planned, Haffey acknowledged, because of unanticipated failures of heating and cooling units in patient rooms. Crews are still replacing the units in some areas of the hospital, he said. But he emphasized that the reopening this week represents a victory.

“The day of the fire, there were experts in the room, people that deal with fire every day, and they told us, ‘You will not open this place for two years,’” Haffey said. “So I’m fairly happy with 18 months.”

All told, the repairs cost an estimated $85 million. “I think we have the safest hospital in Massachusetts,” Haffey said, “because we have a brand new electrical system, brand new fire suppression systems, brand new fire alarms. So we’re excited about that.”

With Brockton Hospital offline for so long, residents have had to rely on the city’s other hospital, Steward Health Care’s Good Samaritan Medical Center. For months, the hospital has been for sale as its parent company navigates bankruptcy. Many others have traveled to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, where officials said the number of patients on a typical day far exceeds the 374 licensed hospital beds.

On a recent afternoon, South Shore Hospital held 564 patients, crammed into hallways and other spaces not initially designed to keep patients overnight.

“We’ve had to buy an extraordinary amount of equipment to manage that patient volume,” said Dr. Jason Tracy, South Shore's chief medical officer. “It’s beds, it’s monitoring equipment, it’s chairs and recliners, it’s blood pressure machines and EKG machines.”

South Shore’s patient numbers increased about 10% when Brockton Hospital abruptly closed last year — and even more when news about Steward’s financial problems earlier this year compelled some patients to start avoiding its hospitals and opt for South Shore instead.

Brockton Hospital’s reopening, Tracy said, will take some pressure off South Shore and other facilities. “There’s some relief in sight,” he said.

Medical emergencies are so frequent in Brockton, with a population over 100,000, that the city this summer expanded its fleet of ambulances from eight to 10.

“Brockton is a very, very busy system,” said Domenic Corey, operations supervisor for Brewster Ambulance Service, the company that responds to 911 calls in the city.

Corey expects Brockton Hospital’s reopening will allow ambulance crews to reach patients and begin caring for them more quickly. As the backlog at area hospitals begins to ease, Corey expects medics also will spend less time in hospital emergency departments waiting to drop off patients.

“We are incredibly excited to see the increased capacity in the city limits,” Corey said. “It’s going to be a pretty big impact.”