Residents express concern over loss of emergency department following Nashoba Valley Medical Center's closure

Photo I Courtesy of State House News Source Nashoba Valley Medical Center is one of two Steward Health Care hospitals in Massachusetts that has been closed.

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By Alison Kuznitz I State House News Service

Canvassers with the nonprofit Health Care For All have fanned out across communities affected by the closures of Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer and managed to speak with thousands of people, Executive Director Amy Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal recapped the sprawling public engagement efforts -- designed to supplement efforts also underway by work groups tasked with developing recommendations for community health care needs amid the Steward Health Care hospital voids -- at the Health Policy Commission's cost trends hearing last week.

"Thanks to support from local foundations, unions, corporate donors, and the state, Health Care For All has had the real privilege of being able to be at the doors in Nashoba Valley and Carney catchment areas," Rosenthal said Thursday. "We've talked to 10,000 people in the past four weeks in those communities about what it is that's impacting them and what they're hearing. And we are giving them information, and we are receiving information, and it's really fascinating."

In the Nashoba area, 56 percent of people say their top concern is having no emergency department nearby, Rosenthal said. Around Carney, 18 percent of people say the economic impacts caused by the hospital closure are their top concern, compared to 15 percent who say it is having no ED nearby and 14 percent citing the loss of inpatient facilities.

Rosenthal said canvassing is winding down, and Health Care For All is collaborating with the work groups to hold "visioning sessions."

"We'll run about a dozen of these, where we'll talk with community members over a longer period of time to understand what the suggestions they have about what their communities need in terms of health care, in terms of access, in terms of services," Rosenthal said.