Given the uncertainty and growing fear surrounding the planned closure of Carney Hospital on Saturday (August 31), city emergency medical services first responders are intensifying their response plans to cover Dorchester and Mattapan beginning this weekend.
Boston EMS officials acknowledge they still haven’t received clear signals from Carney’s bankrupt owners at Steward Health Care on key logistical issues, including whether the rescue team will have access to a garage they have long used as a base of operations at Carney.
“Without this hospital, patients needing emergency care will be transported to other Boston hospitals, some of which are already experiencing capacity issues,” said Caitlin McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Boston EMS. “This will likely result in longer transport times for patients who must travel long distances to the nearest hospital, as well as longer wait times for ambulances.”
She added: “With some of the most highly qualified paramedics and emergency medical technicians, we remain committed to clinical excellence and are prepared to adapt and provide additional resources to continue to provide compassionate care and timely delivery of life-saving interventions.”
But city officials also say they have not received any official word from Steward about the station in Carney, where the EMS Paramedic 3 ambulance crew is stationed in an ambulance bay. For now, paramedics plan to hunker down “nearby” in case they get locked out of the building. The city also plans to send a second ambulance crew to Carney to provide short-term assistance while paramedics adjust to the longer drive time to transport patients to other hospitals.
A Steward Health Care spokesperson did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment on the status of the EMS station in Carney.
Three-quarters of the patients transported by Boston EMS to Carney come from Dorchester or Mattapan, according to city officials. That’s about 7 percent of all EMS referrals citywide. In 2023, of the 91,369 patients served citywide, 6,313 were transferred to Carney, according to city officials – an average of 17 per day. In 2022, there were 6,769 referrals to Carney. Most referred patients (72 percent) were between the ages of 23 and 65.
Councilman John FitzGerald called the potential impact on voters in his district “catastrophic,” adding that the hospital’s current emergency room is only eight years old.
“We invested in the new EMS facility in Carney in 2016,” he said. “Eight years from now, we see that investment potentially being wasted by closing that hospital. Over 75 percent of all EMS that come to Carney are from Dorchester and Mattapan, and those are people who are not receiving adequate care. That’s a huge blow to the emergency services that Carney users receive and speaks to who those services are available to.”
FitzGerald added that he had heard of isolated cases where the hospital had been turned away for follow-up appointments even before it officially closed.
“It’s not an emergency, it’s not even affecting people in the future, but we’re hearing that people are currently being turned away and they’re getting into a situation where they’re not getting medical care,” he said. “We need to know where that medical care is going to come from.”
A state-funded regulatory agency charged with overseeing Steward Hospitals requested this week that the emergency room at Nashoba Valley Medical Center be kept open for at least another month, citing safety concerns for the central Massachusetts communities affected by Steward Hospital’s closure. So far, the ombudsman has not made such a request for Carney Hospital.
A complaint sent to the Attorney General’s Office by a Dorchester man last week alleged that Steward Health Care is violating the civil rights of black and Latino Bostonians by closing Carney Hospital, thereby “denying them access to medical care and emergency services afforded to others throughout the City of Boston.”
The complaint also targeted the state of Massachusetts for enabling the closure by allowing Steward to close the hospital on an accelerated schedule – and for intervening to prevent the closure of other hospitals, but not Carney’s.
“This complaint alleges that Steward Carney intentionally allowed this hospital to close in order to deny access to Black and Latino residents of Dorchester, Mattapan, Roslindale and Hyde Park,” says the complaint, written by Haris Hardaway, a Dorchester resident who is also running for state representative in Suffolk’s 6th District.
He says the shutdown will disproportionately harm black and brown Bostonians by “directly limiting life-saving medical care” and “impacting the distances that must be traveled to receive critical care and emergency services.”
The Attorney General’s Office has received the complaint but declined to comment further on its status.
Reporter writer Bill Forry contributed to this report.
