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North Adams Group Renews Demands For Full-Service Hospital

Josh Landes

A Berkshire County group marked the fourth anniversary of the sudden closure of North Adams Regional Hospital Wednesday.

It isn’t the crowd it used to be.

“We filled the room at the North Adams American Legion every Tuesday night," said Cindy Bird, a former employee of North Adams Regional Hospital. She spoke with WAMC Wednesday in the North Adams Public Library after an emotional meeting with about a dozen members of the North County Cares Coalition. The citizens group was formed in the wake of North Adams Regional Hospital’s abrupt closure in 2014, which left around 540 in the city without work. Many said they were losing their community.

“It was a sense of us being able to see each other. People that you saw every single day you were able to just see them once a week, and we would gather there. And there were friends that would cook meals for us, and that would be our social day, would be Tuesday. Now it’s in Walmart, or in a store. I’m sad, because I really would have wanted to have seen more people here tonight. I’m very sad that I didn’t see more than one other person who worked at the hospital,” Bird said.

Dick Dassatti has been involved with the North County Cares Coalition since 2014.

“The further you get away from the closure, people head in different directions. Businesses close, people move away. We see that our goal is to still be that voice advocating for a full-service hospital, and we’ll continue to pursue that. I mean, we’re hoping for the political winds to change, and instead of providing tax breaks to billionaires, we start funding public hospitals and public libraries and communities,” said Dassatti.

Some medical services have returned in the form of Berkshire Health North, a facility on the site of the former hospital operated by Berkshire Health Systems as a satellite for its main complex in Pittsfield, Berskhire Medical Center. BHS spokesman Michael Leary spoke with WAMC News in 2016 about the services offered.

“The Neighborhood for Health was opened in the middle of 2015 and is seeing patients regularly who need some assistance in preventing hospital admissions,” said BHS spokesman Michael Leary. “We have our laboratory drawing stations there and outpatient radiology services – including MRI and CT as well as screening mammography. Home care services are offered through the Berkshire VNA. We also have outpatient surgery for orthopedics, urologic care and GYN. Our diabetes program is on the North Adams campus. The tobacco treatment services are offered there, wound care and cardiovascular testing,” Leary said.

“A consolation prize is not enough," said Dassatti. "What we need is a full-service hospital with in-patient beds.”

Dassatti points to the opioid epidemic and mental health as two of the major issues that a full-service hospital could address in North Adams. A sense of inequity in both Berkshire County and the healthcare industry prevailed at the meeting.

“I feel like we should be compared to Great Barrington in terms of population," said Bird. "And I think that we should have been able to get what they had, but I feel like because we’re in a lower income area, they have looked down upon them, so they didn’t work hard enough for us to get what we needed.”

“We also want equal access to care," said Dassatti. "Although we’re a poor community, Berkshire Health Systems serves all of Berkshire County. There’s a hospital in South County, Fairview Hospital, it’s an award-winning hospital, and then there’s Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield. Just in North County, there is no in-patient beds, no hospital, no maternity care.”

Bird says the sense of isolation from the rest of the county has intensified over the past four years.

“A lot of the politicians are gone now. Senator Ben Downing was huge in our corner. He’s no longer the senator, it’s Adam Hinds. Gail Cariddi was state representative, she’s since passed. Mayor Alcombright is no longer in. So there’s change in the politicians, and I don’t that think they- Martha Coakley is gone. So I don’t think that anyone has it there anymore. We’re living it and breathing it every day and they are not,” said Bird.

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