NORWOOD — The Norwood Hospital Task Force today released its interim report detailing the ongoing public health, emergency response and regional health care impacts resulting from the closure of Norwood Hospital, while calling on state leaders to take action to restore acute-care services to the site.
The report concludes that the loss of Norwood Hospital continues to have significant consequences throughout the region, utilizing the state’s own data that shows longer ambulance transport times, increased strain on surrounding hospitals, diminished access to emergency and cardiac care, and the loss of critical health care services once relied upon by approximately 250,000 residents in Norwood and 11 surrounding communities.
”The communities Norwood Hospital served lost their hospital and its acute care services to a natural disaster. A chain of corporate failures outside their control has compounded the consequences of this disaster and denied a region access to vitally necessary healthcare services,” the report states.
“The evidence in this report establishes that the loss is real, measurable, and ongoing — and that restoring acute care to the region is a matter of regional public health that warrants action by the Commonwealth.”
The Task Force is urging the Massachusetts Legislature to advance H.5192, legislation filed by Rep. John Rogers and Sen. Michael Rush that would authorize the Commonwealth to acquire the property and facilitate its return to health care use under a qualified operator.
The report also comes amid renewed scrutiny of the role corporate ownership and financial interests have played in the hospital’s continued closure.
“What happened to Norwood Hospital should concern every resident of Massachusetts,” said Task Force Chair and Town General Manager Tony Mazzucco. “This hospital did not fail. It was profitable. It served generations of families. It was lost to a natural disaster and then became trapped in a system that increasingly treats health care infrastructure as a financial asset rather than a public necessity.”
The report documents the real consequences of allowing critical health care assets to remain tied up in financial and real estate disputes while communities continue to lose access to care.
“Across Massachusetts and around the country, private equity firms, real estate investment trusts and other financial interests have extracted enormous value from hospitals while communities are left to deal with the consequences,” said Steve Costello, a member of the Norwood Hospital Task Force, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Canton. “Norwood Hospital is one of the clearest examples of what happens when financial engineering takes priority over patient care and community health.”
The report notes that Norwood Hospital remained profitable prior to the catastrophic June 2020 flood, which forced its closure, and demand for health care services in the region has remained strong since then.
The property is owned by Medical Properties Trust, an Alabama-based real estate investment trust, which recently raised its asking price by 50% during negotiations with a local hospital operator.
“Today, a partially completed hospital sits vacant while hundreds of thousands of residents continue to live with the consequences,” Mazzucco said. “The need for emergency care, inpatient services, cardiac care and behavioral health services never disappeared. What disappeared was the political will to force a resolution.”
In addition to supporting H.5192, the Task Force is encouraging residents to sign the Finish Norwood Hospital petition, which has already collected more than 6,000 signatures.
“Corporate greed and private equity pillaging of our healthcare system in Massachusetts must come to an end, and we are calling on the legislature to end this corporate rampage before it is too late for the Commonwealth. At some point, this conversation must stop being about real estate transactions and start being about public health,” Mazzucco said. “A quarter-million people lost a hospital. The need remains. The site remains. The Commonwealth now has an opportunity to act and must do so.”
Click here for the full report.
To follow the Finish Norwood Hospital campaign, visit the campaign website or the campaign’s socials: Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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