WESTFIELD – With contract negotiations ongoing between Baystate Noble Hospital and Baystate Health, the Massachusetts Nurse’s Association hosted an online Zoom forum facilitated by state Sen. John Velis to discuss the future of the hospital.

The forum included input from nurses, local government officials, and concerned community members all in favor of preserving the hospital.

To start the conversation, Velis said that one of the biggest issues in the medical field right now is mental health.

“One of the major concerns is mental health. As we became painfully aware during this year in particular, issues with mental health have been greatly exacerbated by COVID-19. Sharing and talking about the issues of mental health is paramount to improving our communities,” he said.

Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse was also a guest panelist and said it was important to keep local hospitals open and was against the current health care system.

“When we have a health care system that puts profits before people, we think about Baystate, we think about Trinity, and the exorbitant number of closings and consolidations in Western Massachusetts. The status quo is failing the people in our communities,” he said.  

While negotiations with Baystate started again after a pause during the pandemic, Paul Dubin, the Massachusetts Nurse’s Association’s co-chair and a registered nurse at Baystate Noble said they have gone poorly so far.

“The negotiations are not going well unfortunately; we have common ground but some of the stuff that they’d like to take away is significant and we’re just not ready to agree to those. The takeaways are substantive including raises and overtime pay changes,” he said.

One of the biggest concerns at the hospital is a lack of staffing.

“We’ve had up to 10 admitted patients in our ER waiting for beds, and not necessarily waiting for beds, beds are available, but staffing is not. So, they stay in the ED until staffing becomes adequate up on the medical floor,” Mary Martin, a registered nurse at Baystate Noble said.

She added that part of the current negotiations includes bringing back staff and services that were cut during negotiations in 2019.

“When we have critical patients, because of the ICU and the telemetry unit closing, our critical patients all get transferred to Baystate and they have to wait until that is assigned or becomes available, and then our ER becomes a mini ICU which does consume staff at times,” Martin said.

Along with closures to the ICU and telemetry program, Baystate Health also plans on closing the Fowler Wing, which focuses on helping substance abuse victims.

“From our perspective at Forum House is that the closure of the Fowler Wing would be absolutely devastating. There’s been such a strong linkage between mental health programs and services in Westfield including Noble and the Forum House and the closure would dismantle this linkage and people will fall through the cracks,” said Lauren Woodard, the program director with Forum House.

While the closure of Baystate Noble’s services hampers the nursing staff, Keith Supinksi, a Westfield fire captain and union president said it also impacts their department.

“It is a big burden on the Westfield firefighters to do these calls. It is a lot of time spent out of the city doing these. It’s not every day, but when it is a busy day from Noble to Baystate, it’s almost like an express train back and forth, and it becomes taxing on everybody,” he said.

One of the community speakers, Donna Stern, a registered nurse with Baystate-Franklin, said she was concerned with Baystate Health’s current behavior.

“It would be an understatement if I said I wasn’t gravely concerned with what is going on in health care locally, with Trinity and Baystate in terms of their behavior,” she said.

Stern said she has been directly involved with similar negotiations with Baystate Health in the past and said there needs to be legislation to monitor hospitals.

“Without laws Baystate will do exactly what it’s going to do. The Department of Public Health can deem something essential but without laws they cannot stop the closure, so we need the essential services bill to pass,” she said.