Days after 10-alarm Brockton Hospital fire, it’s still unclear when patients can return

A fire at Brockton Hospital earlier this week prompted the evacuation of more than 160 patients. The hospital is closed, and it's not clear yet when it is going to be able to reopen.

GBH’s Craig LeMoult joined GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about the impact that has on patient care. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: So, Craig, you spoke this week with a nurse who was on duty at Brockton Hospital when the fire broke out — and they were able to get everyone out safely.

Craig LeMoult: Yeah. I talked with nurse Felicia Daley, who was working on the second floor of the hospital early Tuesday morning when the power went out, first, and then the alarms went off and the fire doors slammed shut.

Felicia Daley, pre-recorded: And that's when it was really clear that not only was there smoke, but it was — it was close. It was close to this floor.

LeMoult: What started as an electrical transformer fire grew into a 10-alarm emergency. Daley described to me this dramatic scene of hospital staff and firefighters evacuating more than 160 patients from the building. It was an incredibly hard thing to do, but by all accounts, it actually went surprisingly smoothly.

Rath: And we don't have a clear sense of when the hospital is going to reopen, but do we have even a vague sense? What's the hospital saying?

LeMoult: Yeah, I talked to Lorraine McGrath about that today. She's the hospital's assistant vice president of marketing and communications.

Lorraine McGrath, pre-recorded: Now that we know that everybody is safe, our main objective is to take care of our staff, and our priority is to get Brockton Hospital safely up and running as soon as possible.

LeMoult: They're still assessing the damage, and at this point they can't say when they're going to be able to open back up again.

Rath: So those patients who were evacuated, what's happened to them?

LeMoult: The 160 or so patients who were in the hospital at the time have been transferred to other hospitals around the region, including in Boston. But, of course, there's a lot of other patients who, ordinarily, would be coming in on a daily basis. And a lot of them are winding up just about five miles away at Good Samaritan Medical Center, which is also in Brockton.

I spoke today with administrators there, and they told me the ER patients there have doubled. I also talked with an emergency room nurse, Kimberly Vasquez, who agreed with that estimate.

Kimberly Vasquez, pre-recorded: We have a lot of people coming in, basically flooding the waiting room and flooding the hallways and flooding the rooms. And, you know, we're just feeling it. We're feeling the pressure.

LeMoult: Good Samaritan's President, Matthew Hesketh, told me they're looking into opening up alternative spaces to meet the demand.

Matthew Hesketh, pre-recorded: Nothing's really off the table. We're looking at various spaces and also where we can expand and create capacity. We're looking at how we can stand up urgent care–type facilities in the community to allow for timely access for folks that may not need a hospital level of care, or emergency department level of care.

Rath: And, Craig, wouldn't it help to have all those doctors and nurses who were at Brockton?

LeMoult: Yeah, there's an effort to try to get some of those doctors, especially, over there. Yesterday, the state expedited the credentialing process so that those doctors and physician assistants from Brockton Hospital can come over to Good Samaritan. Again, here's Good Samaritan's President Matthew Hesketh.

Hesketh: That will essentially allow us to provide quick access for their physicians to continue to care for their patients, and whether that be through providing the services here at Good Samaritan — i.e., for surgeons and obstetricians who have, you know, patients in need of immediate care.

LeMoult: Or he said some primary care patients could be seen at Good Samaritan. It's not clear yet if they can get nurses from Brockton Hospital to come over.

This actually all comes at a really challenging time for Good Samaritan. There's a shortage of medical staff basically everywhere right now, right? But even before this new influx of patients, things were pretty tight at Good Samaritan.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association recently filed two complaints with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, saying that staffing shortages there were creating dangerous conditions in the hospital's ER. I talked today with Jennifer Falter, who's a registered nurse on the labor and delivery unit at the hospital.

Jennifer Falter, pre-recorded: The instance of the fire at Brockton really just exacerbated those issues. We're doing what we can to provide care, but at the end of the day, there's only so many nurses. And with the influx of patients, it's just difficult to safely care for the number of patients that we have with the number of nurses and caregivers that we have.

LeMoult: The nurses contract expired at the end of December, and they're currently working on negotiating a new contract with the hospital. And as they continue those negotiations, Falter said they're hoping they can work together with management to come up with solutions to the staffing issues that really only got worse this week.