Boston City Council sounds alarm over Carney Hospital closure

With frustrations mounting over the closure of Carney Hospital at the end of August, the Boston City Council adopted a resolution Wednesday calling for a public health emergency and applying new pressure on the state to protect patient care.

The resolution, led by Councilors John FitzGerald and Ed Flynn, marks the latest attempt to stave off bankrupt Steward Health Care's plan to shutter the Dorchester hospital. Last week, ralliers at the State House urged the Healey administration to step in. The resolutions calls on the city and Boston Public Health Commission to declare a public health emergency due to the closure and to "take all possible steps necessary to preserve the operations of Carney Hospital, and ensure that Steward is following all state and local laws."

"We need to create the environment, both politically and financially, where keeping Carney open becomes the best (option) for all sides of this fiasco," FitzGerald said during a council meeting Wednesday afternoon. He acknowledged that a hospital closure may not meet the criteria to declare an emergency and that associated emergency powers "may not be applicable to the cause of keeping the Carney open."

"And we will not throw in the towel yet until we have exhausted all of our options," FitzGerald continued.

Twelve councilors voted in favor of the resolution, prompting applause inside the chamber. Council Tania Fernandes Anderson voted "present," saying she wanted more time to discuss the measure with stakeholders.

Patient volume has been declining at the Carney and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, which Steward also plans to close on Aug. 31, as people seek care at non-Steward hospitals. In June, on average 13 out of the Carney's 83 medical beds were filled, Healey administration officials said. At Nashoba, an average of 11 out of 46 beds were filled.

Steward is planning 753 layoffs at Carney and 490 at Nashoba for Aug. 31, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act notices.

The Boston resolution also urges the city and state government "to be prepared that if there are no bidders for Carney hospital, to seize the property by eminent domain and to continue to operate the facility until a permanent operator is found."

The resolution makes no direct reference to Gov. Maura Healey, though some councilors called on the governor to also declare a state of emergency and spoke broadly about the importance of exerting "political will" in the aftermath of Steward's financial mismanagement.

"I think it's really unfortunate that we're not seizing this moment to have a little bit of political will and courage to say, let's exercise every single tool that we have in our box, in our tool box," said Councilor Julia Mejia, who was added as a co-sponsor to the resolution. "There is no reason why we can't think outside the box and figure out what we need to do to keep Carney open."

Steward has said it got no viable bids to purchase Carney or Nashoba, and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge last week approved the closures without objection from the state. The Department of Public Health has scheduled public hearings next week on Steward's closure plans for Carney and Nashoba.

Healey has said there is nothing she can do to prevent the two hospitals from closing and said Wednesday that she is now focused on keeping the remaining Steward hospitals here open.

"I'm focused on saving five hospitals and protecting patients, protecting jobs and the stability of the health care market, and that's what we're working on," Healey told reporters at the State House. "And our hope is that this deal gets finalized so that these hospitals can continue under different ownership."

During a meeting Tuesday night, the Ayer Select Board approved a resolution that implores the Healey administration to declare a public health emergency in an effort to prevent Nashoba from closing. It also directs Healey to "do everything in her powers as Governor" to ensure that Steward complies with the 120-day notice rule to the state for an essential closure, and that Healey work with federal, state and local leaders to "develop a permanent transition plan with funding to ensure that NVMC remains open and operational and ultimately transfers to a responsible operators."

The closure "will create a health care desert in the Nashoba Valley Region impacting over 100,000 residents of the Commonwealth; increase emergency response times to over an hour; cut off direct, local access to public health care to the regions' most vulnerable populations; create the loss of over 500 jobs; and shutter the entire emergency response service for the 15 (Towns) of the Nashoba Valley Medical Center," the resolution states.

In Boston on Wednesday, Councilor Liz Breadon called the Steward crisis a "travesty."

"I think there is a need to be outraged by this situation and do everything we can to stop this (from) happening and use every tool in the kit to try and prevent it [from] happening, and to really appeal to our leaders at the state and national level to do something about this," Breadon said. "It should never have gotten to this stage."

Flynn said the city is "already in a public health emergency."

"It's not going to get better, but what we can't do is give up on the hospital. We can't throw up our hands and say it's unlikely that the hospital is going to stay open," Flynn said.