Calling Quincy Medical Center “unsustainable,” Steward Health Care is shutting down the hospital at the end of the year and replacing it with a 24-hour emergency department and outpatient services.
Steward said the closure will have relatively little impact on patients, since 15 hospitals are located within 10 miles of Quincy Medical Center. The shutdown will affect about 680 employees and make Quincy the largest city in New England without its own hospital, according to a report by the Patriot Ledger.
In a press release, Steward said it has pumped $100 million into the hospital since buying the facility out of bankruptcy in 2011 yet still incurs operating losses of $20 million a year. Officials said only about a fifth of the hospital’s 196 beds are occupied on a daily basis. Steward is a for-profit company owned by Cerberus Capital Management of New York, which fashioned the hospital chain with the initial purchase of the struggling Caritas chain of hospitals in 2010.
Health care experts have been saying for years that Massachusetts has too many hospitals and some of the financially weaker facilities need to close. Mark Girard, president of Steward Hospitals, told the Globe that there are no plans to close other Steward facilities or sell the entire hospital system. “What this does is position Steward as a stronger health system,” Girard told the Globe.
Girard said in the company’s press release that Quincy Medical Center suffers because few city residents seek treatment at the hospital. He said only 16 percent of Quincy-area residents seek inpatient hospital care in Quincy. Many are migrating to academic medical centers in Boston, he said.
Girard also said the “vast majority” of patients who use emergency services at Quincy Medical Center have non-urgent needs. In the last year, about 80 percent of all emergency room patients were treated and released on the same day and about half of those who remained were transferred to behavioral health units.
Steward disclosed that it has been meeting weekly since October with state regulators, health care experts, and labor leaders to discuss the hospital’s dire finances.
