With last year’s abrupt shuttering of North Adams Regional Hospital, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says her office is looking at ways to better deal with potential closures of financially struggling hospitals. Hospital leadership gave three days notice that it was closing.Healey says in the face of future hospital closures the state needs to have the right tools in place to deal with any fall out.
“To make sure that patients are protected, to make sure that the employees are protected, that the community is protected and that there is as much as notice and an opportunity to take needed steps as there should be,” Healey said. “We didn’t see it in this instance, but I know it’s the subject of some legislation and discussion right now and that’s really important.”
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office says there is an open and ongoing investigation into the actions of the board of trustees that led to sudden closure of NARH in March 2014.
