Beverly Lawler says she needs a miracle — and soon.
The 62-year-old has spent nearly half a century working for Steward Health Care: 30 years at Quincy Medical Center, which shuttered in 2014, and the last decade as a nurse aide at Carney Hospital. Now with Carney slated to close in two weeks, Lawler expects to lose her job, her health insurance and about $20,000 in unused paid time off she’s accrued during her career.
“We don’t know what to do,” Lawler said. “Steward has people’s lives in their hands and they don’t care. They don’t care at all.”
Public pushback against Steward’s decision has grown since the health provider announced in bankruptcy documents its plan to close Carney and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer “on or around Aug. 31.”
More than 750 employees are expected to lose their jobs when Carney closes, according to Dana Simon, a union organizer with the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Lawler joined community leaders, elected officials and other healthcare employees at a rally outside a Department of Public Health hearing Tuesday evening at Dorchester’s Florian Hall. The crowd urged state officials to intervene and keep Carney open. But protesters said if the hospital can’t be saved, they want the state to at least ensure that employees are given the severance and other payments they are owed.
Carl Odom, a cardiopulmonary technician who has worked at Carney for more than four decades and a union steward with Service Employees International Union 1199, said if the hospital must close, Steward needs to fulfill its legal obligation.
“Many people in this room have 300, 400 hours [of accrued PTO]. We haven’t had vacations or breaks, we’ve done that because we’ve been loyal, and we should be paid for that,” he said. “Steward knows that, the contract says that. Pay us.”
When asked about the payments, a spokesperson for Steward said “the decision has not been made,” telling GBH News in a statement that the choice “rests with the bankruptcy court.”
Simon from the Massachusetts Nurses Association said Steward is obligated to pay severance and “accrued hours” — which includes PTO — according to federal law, state law and a collective bargaining agreement between Steward and members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Service Employees International Union 1199, which represents around 5,000 workers at Steward hospitals across Massachusetts.
Steward has the option to file a motion with a bankruptcy court requesting to waive the organization’s legal obligations to make these payments. A spokesperson said that’s “under discussion and not up to Steward alone,” adding that “all expenditures have to be approved by the court.”
Steward’s North Region President Dr. Octavio Diaz addressed attendees at Tuesday’s hearing, and was met with boos from the crowd. The transfer of employees and patients is already underway, Diaz said, offering his sympathy to those who will be affected.
“Closing a hospital is painful, and there’s nothing I can say today that will make that any easier,” he said. “While closing Carney Hospital is deeply regrettable, it’s also unavoidable.”
Despite a “complex” sales process that “involved many stakeholders over the course of many, many months,” Steward was only successful in acquiring bids to sell six of its eight Massachusetts hospitals, Diaz said.
Patients of Carney and Nashoba Valley will receive letters directing them to new doctors and hospital locations, Diaz said, and Steward has partnered with the MBTA to provide transit passes to patients needing imaging studies at new locations. Additionally, a patient assistance telephone line will be created to handle “referrals, access to medical records, pending test results, payment questions, lost items and any other questions they may have.”
The health provider is also “assisting our employees as they seek to find other opportunities at Steward facilities or other facilities in the health care field within the Boston area,” Diaz said.
Maureen Rate, a medical secretary who has a long family history of working at Carney and has herself worked there for 45 years, said she hasn’t heard anything from Steward about relocating to a new location. Rate is six years away from retirement, and she’s concerned about finding another opportunity.
“I’ve looked at South Shore, I’ve looked at Brockton, I’ve looked at Steward and former Steward hospitals. There’s a lot of nursing or therapy or radiology jobs, things with licenses, but there’s not many lower-end, clerical jobs available,” she said. “It’s hard to find something when you’ve been working at the same place for 45 years.”
Last week, the Boston City Council issued a resolution urging the state to keep Carney open. At protests throughout the state, people have called on Gov. Maura Healey to enforce a state law requiring medical facilities to provide 120 days notice before closing.
Healey told reporters earlier this month that the state owes Medicaid funds to Steward and plans to provide $30 million to keep Carney and Nashoba open until Aug. 31 and support the six Steward hospitals that received bids from new owners.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Boston City Council members continued to urge Healey and other state leaders to intervene and stop the closure – something Healey has repeatedly said she doesn’t have the power to do.
“This is a public health issue, this is a civil rights issue, this is an emergency,” City Councilor Ed Flynn, who previously worked at Carney as a security guard. “I’m going to continue to advocate and fight, along with the nurses and dedicated staff, to keep this hospital open. I don’t accept that from the state. And I don’t accept that from the city of Boston either.”
Lawler says she’s still holding out hope for a miracle, but the clock is ticking. Her husband is disabled and needs a heart surgery next month, but efforts to find a new doctor have been difficult, and concerns about coverage are keeping Lawler up at night.
“At the end of this month, we won’t have insurance or a doctor to even get him his medications he needs,” she said. “We’re stuck. We don’t know where to go.”
