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Monday’s annual meeting of the Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce brought together the two women most responsible for saving Holy Family Hospital in Methuen and Haverhill.
Gov. Maura T. Healey thanked Lawrence General Hospital President and CEO Abha Agrawal as she was honored with the Ralph B. Wilkinson Award, the Chamber’s highest honor. The governor put in place the state’s response to the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, while Agrawal made the bold bid to buy the hospital with campuses in two neighboring cities. Healey praised Agrawal as “the right leader at the right time.”
“What a mess when we got the word that Steward was going out of business,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re out of the state. I wanted them out of the state because I thought they were a terrible actor. But I wanted to make sure we were saving hospitals, saving jobs, saving the stability of the healthcare market. I want to give huge credit to the Lawrence General team and Dr. Agrawal for coming through, stepping up to save Holy Family in Haverhill and Methuen and to continue to provide care to this region,” Healey told the crowd at Michael’s Function Hall in Haverhill.
Agrawal is credited with spearheading Lawrence General Hospital’s purchase of the bankrupt Holy Family Hospital campuses for $28 million. Agrawal said she was “honored and privileged” to receive the award, which is presented to those who have made significant contributions to the region, in honor of the late Ralph B. Wilkinson, a civic leader from Lawrence who served his community until his death in 1952.
“I was really attracted by the focus on community and mission from Lowell General Hospital and its dedication to advancing health equity in the community,” she said. “It seems like I came at the right time because the threat of Steward’s bankruptcy was looming on the horizon. So, we, along with the board of trustees, dreamt what seemed like an audacious and improbable dream, to bring together Lawrence General and Holy Family Hospitals, to preserve access to care and to create a locally led anchor regional community health system which was focused on health equity and a mission of serving everyone.”
As WHAV reported in January, Agrawal was tapped as the hospital’s new CEO and was described as “transformative leader with the excitement” by former board chair Mike Manusco.
She praised her team for their work in and community for their role in preserving both hospitals. As WHAV reported in October, Lawrence General Hospital said its takeover of both hospitals went “absolutely with no glitches.”
Massachusetts was one of eight states impacted by the bankruptcy, with nine hospitals in the state owned by the company.
Healey credited the state with saving hospitals, with St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton sold to Boston Medical Center, as well as Morton Hospital in Taunton and St. Annes Hospital in Fall River sold to Lifespan out of Providence for $175 million.
Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer closed in August, with Norwood Hospital, which has seen ongoing restoration work, abandoned by Steward amid bankruptcy hearings. “This is something no other state was able to do. The hospitals closed everywhere else in the country but not in Massachusetts. We were able to save six to eight hospitals, 13,000 jobs and that’s a big deal,” Healey said.
Incoming Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce President Michael Bevilacqua. (WHAV News file photograph,)
After the event, Agrawal told WHAV she is feeling “tremendous excitement about the possibility of reimagining health care” in the region.
“I think collectively we have gone through a lot of uncertainty. If you think about it from the perspective of patients, they were not sure they were going to have a hospital to go to,” she said. “If you think about it from the perspective of the staff, they were not sure they were going to have a job. So now, we have come into a situation where we have tremendous opportunities now.”
She added, “there was competition and now we can create this integrated mission-driven, equity-based health care system in the Merrimack Valley that serves everyone, regardless of the language they speak and regardless of where they were born.”
In other chamber news, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Bevilacqua was named the next president of the organization as of Jan. 1, 2025, succeeding his father, Joseph J. Bevilacqua.
Gov. Maura T. Healey and Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce President Joseph J. Bevilacqua. (WHAV News photograph.)