After COVID delay, MetroWest Medical Center closing acute-care in Natick hospital

Photo | Grant Welker MetroWest Medical Center's Leonard Morse Hospital in Natick

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By Grant Welker

MetroWest Medical Center is continuing ahead with plans delayed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic to close acute-care services at its Natick campus.

Leonard Morse Hospital continued to see emergency patients, including those with coronavirus, for months after MetroWest Medical Center announced in January it would remake the hospital into a specialized behavioral healthcare campus. By mid-March, with the pandemic causing officials to take quick action to accommodate a fast-rising number of cases, those plans were shelved.

MetroWest Medical Center said late Friday it is now continuing on with a notice it gave to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which must approve the change.

Emergency services at MetroWest will be consolidated at its Framingham Union Hospital about six miles away. Both that hospital and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, which is also owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, have enough capacity to care for coronavirus patients in the event of a recurrence of a high number of cases, MetroWest Medical Center CEO Andrew Harding said in a statement.

MetroWest Medical Center expects the change in services at Leonard Morse to take place in about four months, with services for child, adolescent, adult and geriatric psychiatric care. Framingham Union Hospital is planned to undergo upgrades for acute-care services, including to its electronic health record system and clinical equipment.

The Natick campus is licensed for 160 beds: 64 medical and surgical beds, 10 intensive care unit beds, and 86 psychiatric service beds. In the most recent five-year period on record with the Massachusetts Center for Health Information and Analysis, MetroWest Medical Center reported a 9.5% drop in patient discharges, compared with a median increase of 1.1% among cohort hospitals.