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Coalition Sharing North Adams Hospital Closure Experiences At National Conference

The former North Adams Regional Hospital is now the Northern Berkshire campus of Berkshire Medical Center.
Jim Levulis
/
WAMC
The former North Adams Regional Hospital is now the Northern Berkshire campus of Berkshire Medical Center.

Members of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition are in Minnesota to share their experiences of rebuilding the region’s healthcare system following the sudden closure of North Adams Regional Hospital in 2014.NBCC executive director Adam Hinds, Rural Health Network director Polly Macpherson and the coalition’s former head Al Bashevkin are presenting at the annual National Conference on Rural Health in Minneapolis. Bashevkin stepped down as executive director in 2015, but was at the helm in March 2014 when North Adams Regional closed on three days’ notice.

“Once the hospital closed we had a forum within a month or two,” Bashevkin recalled. “To bring together people from Berkshire Health Systems and people from the North Berkshire community to talk about their ideas. In terms of the community coalition, we always felt that what we needed to do was help the community have a voice.”

About two months after the closure, Berkshire Health Systems reopened the emergency department. The Pittsfield-based provider later purchased the North Adams facility, investing millions of dollars to establish same-day surgery, imaging and preventive healthcare services.

“Healthcare is changing,” Bashevkin said. “We’ve been very familiar and used to the ‘sick-care’ model that we’ve had in healthcare. We’re now slowly evolving, and I think the closing of North Adams Regional Hospital has helped us to see this better, moving from a ‘sick-care’ model to a health model. What do we need to do to promote health in the community? Sometimes that doesn’t have to do with a hospital. Sometimes it has to do with exercise and the structures that we have in a community to promote health.” 

More than two years after the closure, a group of community members continues to meet weekly, calling for the restoration of a full-service hospital with inpatient beds.

“We’re here at this conference because we’re learning from other communities who have faced the same kind of thing and have had to answer that hard question, ‘When are you going to put beds back because that’s what we think we really need?’” Macpherson explained. “We’re learning there are lots of different models and things that are very sustainable.” 

For the past year, NBCC has been working with Berkshire Health Systems, Community Health Programs, The Brien Center, regional ambulance services and the city of North Adams along with area stakeholders like Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to increase healthcare efficiencies in the Northern Berkshires. One of the efforts funded by a $100,000 federal grant involves establishing a communications network so residents can explain to providers what services they need and learn what types of care are available. With an estimated 58 hospital closures nationwide since 2010, Hinds says other initiatives include increasing primary care and mental health options in the Northern Berkshires.

“There are a lot of distinct challenges that are unique to the rural environment,” Hinds said. “We’re going to learn about a lot of cutting-edge areas of work, some of which we’re already moving on including in areas of telemedicine. So for example if you have someone in North Adams who needs to work with a specialist in a different part of the state or the county…putting that infrastructure in place to allow that to happen is a priority. Working on other events relating to warm handoffs from one specialist to another or even some questions around how do we do transportation in the health environment in a better way?” 

Macpherson says NBCC has applied for another year of funding to continue the rural health network. The conference runs through Friday.

“They laugh a little bit at us when we say we’re here for the rural health conference because they say ‘Massachusetts? You’re rural?’” Macpherson explained. “Well certainly North Berkshire County is rural, but we don’t have the same distance challenges that we’re learning about from our colleagues in North Dakota and Montana. So we feel like maybe it’s going to be solvable after all. We only have 30 miles to go.”

Jim is WAMC’s Associate News Director and hosts WAMC's flagship news programs: Midday Magazine, Northeast Report and Northeast Report Late Edition. Email: jlevulis@wamc.org
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