Haverhill Hospital Faces Closing as State, Bidder Appear to Seal Fate; Finegold Urges Resolution

Fears that Haverhill will cease to have a hospital within its borders were renewed late Friday when the sole bidder for Holy Family Hospital signaled it could not keep the Haverhill campus open without state help.

The bidder, identified by several parties as Lawrence General Hospital, had been in final negotiations to buy the hospital when the Haverhill real estate became a sticking point. Sen. Barry R. Finegold told WHAV early Saturday morning the Haverhill hospital must be saved.

“I don’t know what (the) LGH final bid included as the situation is very fluid, but I believe the Haverhill Campus of Holy Family is integral to the health care needs of the Merrimack Valley and should he included in LGH bid,” Finegold said via text message.

It appeared earlier in the week that one obstacle in the way of using the hospital’s real estate had been removed when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez voided the leases parent Steward Health Care negotiated when it sold its properties in 2016.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association has long sounded the alarm about the possible loss of the Haverhill hospital. Massachusetts Nurses Association Statewide Director Dana Simon told Haverhill city councilors in May that the resolve of state officials to keep Haverhill was “starting to soften.”

Union spokesman David Schildmeier told WHAV Saturday the union expects all sides to act.

“There is no valid, moral or medical justification for the loss of Holy Family Haverhill. We believe that all parties—the bidder and the state—needs to work this out, and, ultimately, they have to come to agreement. We cannot allow a city of 67, 000 people to be victims of, on one side, corporate greed and, on the other side, inability of state action to invest the resources that are necessary to protect these communities,” he said.

At the end of July, Lawrence General Hospital Director of Marketing and Communications Ben French would neither confirm nor deny for WHAV reports the hospital had cast the sole bid for Holy Family.

Nurses and others recently urged Gov. Maura T. Healey to tap state reserves. Schildmeier explained how this money can help save Haverhill as well as Steward-owned Carney and Nashoba Hospitals.

“For bridge funding, if funding is an issue, the state has access to $8 billion in a rainy-day fund. We just had from Nashoba and Carney, over a hundred community members and caregivers outside the governor’s office last week with signs that read ‘It is raining ion our communities governor.’”

The current Haverhill hospital was opened by the City of Haverhill in 1984, building on the city’s ownership of Hale Hospital that it had acquired in bankruptcy in 1931. In a statement to State House News Service, Finegold referenced the relatively recent construction of the Haverhill campus. He said, “Haverhill has an incredible campus. It’s a great facility. It’s a newer facility.”