Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey spent the day in Springfield where she focused on pandemic recovery efforts and received an endorsement in her campaign to be the state’s next governor.
At Baystate Medical Center, Healey met privately with frontline workers who told her of the physical and emotional toll the two-year pandemic has taken on them – a reckoning that has resulted in 1 in 5 health care employees nationally leaving the profession.
“These folks were called upon to do things they had never trained for, exactly, or prepared for, but nonetheless found a way to deliver,” Healey said.
Without offering specifics, Healey said she will focus on ways to bring more people into the healthcare workforce.
“There are shortages and we’ve got a pipeline issue and I want to work on that,” Healey said. “This is a huge need.”
Baystate Health is the region’s largest employer with a workforce of 13,000. There are currently 1,800 vacancies which Baystate Health President and CEO Dr. Mark Keroack said they are feverishly trying to fill at the rate of 100 new hires per week.
“It is our number one strategic priority — to get ourselves back fully-staffed,” Keroack said.
He offered an upbeat assessment on the status of the pandemic as it passes the two-year mark.
“COVID is always going to be around at a low level, but I don’t think we are going to see the tremendous surges like we’ve seen,” Keroack said. “We are past that kind of spread and so that is going to allow people to reduce some of the restrictions we’ve been living under.”
The risk of being infected and getting severely ill with COVID-19 may be subsiding, but the pandemic has spawned a well-documented spike in demand for mental health services – another area Healey said she will focus on.
Massachusetts has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country with almost 80 percent of eligible people fully-vaccinated, but Healey said it could be better.
“I am going to continue to focus on that as Attorney General because sadly there are people who are still not vaccinated and that is putting our healthcare workers and their families at risk,” Healey said.
She declined to comment on the health care legislation proposed Tuesday by Governor Charlie Baker because she said she had not had a chance to review it in detail.
While in Springfield, Healey was scheduled to visit Springfield Partners for Community Action, a social service agency that received grant money from the attorney general’s office to help low-income people pay winter energy bills.
She also planned to visit some small businesses to discuss how they are faring in the wake of the public health crisis.
Healey was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Massachusetts Building Trade Council’s convention that is being held in Springfield. The Democrat was expected to receive the endorsement of the 75,000-member labor organization in her bid for governor.
Healey is widely viewed as the front-runner to succeed Baker, the popular Republican who bowed out of running for a third term.
She is facing a challenge for the Democratic nomination from five-term State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz.
Two Republicans are running – former State Representative Geoff Diehl and business-owner Chris Doughty.
