Steward Health Care

Local leaders, first responders and medical providers offered long-awaited recommendations Wednesday for restoring some health care services and alleviating ongoing transportation and emergency response concerns in the Nashoba Valley, where a Steward Health Care hospital closed last summer.

UMass Memorial Health’s first choice to open a standalone emergency room to partially replace the shuttered Nashoba Valley Medical Center was to purchase the closed facility.

Lawmakers rushed a hospital oversight bill to Gov. Maura Healey on Monday, agreeing on policy responses to the Steward Health Care crisis that aim to better regulate private equity firms and stiffen penalties for entities that fail to submit required information.

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.

Health care spending in Massachusetts continued to grow faster than household incomes, according to new research, fueling concerns about access to care even before accounting for more recent upheaval inflicted by Steward Health Care's bankruptcy.

Steward Health Care's retreat from Massachusetts is continuing, with the bankrupt company officially moving in court Monday to abandon the under-construction Norwood Hospital property and close four affiliated outpatient clinics nearby no later than Nov. 5.

The oft-maligned Ralph de la Torre is headed for the exits at Steward Health Care, resigning Tuesday as CEO of the company he founded here in 2010.

The U.S. Senate agreed Wednesday to ask federal prosecutors to consider criminal contempt charges against Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre.

For this rural Massachusetts area, the hospital’s closure will mean extended ER wait times at neighboring hospitals already pushing capacity, quadrupled ambulance turnaround times, and ultimately, the potential collapse of a healthcare system already spread thin.

Steward Health Care has signed "definitive agreements" to sell four of the six Massachusetts hospitals it has been working to offload since filing for bankruptcy in May.