BOSTON, Sept. 3,
2024 /PRNewswire/ --
WEDNESDAY, September 4 at
11 a.m. (ET) -- Bankruptcy Court in Houston to hold a hearing to Approve Sale of 5
Hospitals
The hearing scheduled before Judge Christopher Lopez is to review and approve asset
purchase agreements negotiated between Steward Healthcare, their
lender and the Commonwealth, which include the purchase of Good
Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton by Boston Medical Center, Holy Family
Hospitals in Haverhill and
Methuen by Lawrence General
Hospital, Morton Hospital in Taunton and Saint Anne's Hospital in
Fall River by Lifespan (located in
Providence RI). The state is
also taking St. Elizabeth's Medical Center by eminent domain, with
a plan to transition the facility to Boston Medical Center.
Link to listen to hearing:
https://www.gotomeet.me/JudgeLopez; Phone is 832-917-1510;
590153.
Thursday, September 5 at
7 p.m. – Progressive Mass. Forum:
"Steward and the Future of Healthcare in Massachusetts"
Progressive Mass will host a panel discussion about the Steward
Health Care bankruptcy crisis and what it means for the future of
health care in Massachusetts.
Panelists include Paul Hattis,
senior fellow at the Lown Institute; Katie
Murphy, RN, president of the Massachusetts Nurses
Association; Alan Sager, director of
the health reform program at BU School of Public Health; and
Bill Walczak, founder of Codman
Square Health Center. Enid Eckstein
of JP Progressives moderates. Click here to register for this
virtual forum.
MNA opposition to the closure of Carney Hospital and Nashoba
Valley Medical Center continues, decries DPH statement that
impacted communities need to "imagine a new future for healthcare"
as the state fails to act to preserve access to essential acute
care services; calls UMass Memorial proposal to replace Nashoba
with urgent care center woefully insufficient.
The MNA continues to promote efforts by local public officials,
the state and potential bidders to find a way to reopen both Carney
Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center as full-service
hospitals to avoid a public health disaster. "We reject the
DPH Commissioner's recent statement that these communities should
accept the loss of their hospitals, and 'imagine a new future' for
health care in their community," said MNA President Katie Murphy, RN. "As I testified to DPH
at their recent public hearings on the closure, the only safe
alternative to closing these hospitals is NOT TO CLOSE THESE
HOSPITALS."
The MNA also rejects the idea proposed by UMass Memorial
Healthcare and the Healey administration, which would be to replace
Nashoba Valley Medical Center with an urgent care center.
"We flatly reject this idea. This is not a solution to this
crisis and will not address what the community, local officials,
first responders, physicians and nurses testified to at the DPH
public hearing last week, which is that the 155,000 residents
currently served by a full-service hospital deserve a full-service
hospital. An urgent care center can't provide emergency care
or acute level care and can't replace 20 desperately needed
psychiatric beds. If this plan was accepted, we would still be
forcing desperately ill patients to travel longer distances for
care, and those patients would still be adding to the already
overcrowded emergency departments in surrounding communities, thus
compromising the care for patients throughout Central Massachusetts," said Murphy.
Editors Note: For reporters looking to speak with
nurses at the Steward-owned facilities represented by MNA (which
includes all the hospitals except for St. Anne's) contact
David Schildmeier at
dschildmeier@mnarn.org.
MassNurses.org │ Facebook.com/MassNurses
│ Twitter.com/MassNurses
Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the
largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Its 25,000 members
advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of
nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of
nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view
of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies
on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association