First-responders with the city’s Emergency Medical Services department (EMS) are beefing up their deployment plans to cover Dorchester and Mattapan starting this weekend amid uncertainty and mounting anxiety about the planned closing of Carney Hospital on Saturday (Aug. 31).

Boston EMS officials acknowledge they still have not been given a clear signal from Carney’s bankrupt owners at Steward Health Care about key logistics, including whether first-responders will have use of a garage that they have long used as a base of operations at Carney.

“Without this hospital, patients in need of emergency care will be transported to other Boston hospitals, some of which are already experiencing capacity issues,” said Caitlin McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Boston EMS. “This is likely to result in increased transport times for patients traveling farther to the nearest hospital as well as prolonged turnaround times for ambulances.”

She added: “With some of the most highly skilled EMTs and Paramedics, we remain committed to clinical excellence and are prepared to adjust, adding resources, to continue to provide compassionate care and timely delivery of lifesaving care.”

But city officials also say that they have been getting no official word from Steward about the station at Carney, where the EMS Paramedic 3 ambulance crew is based at an ambulance bay. For now, the paramedics plan to base "nearby" if they find themselves locked out of the building. The city is also planning to deploy a second ambulance crew to the Carney to assist in the near-term as paramedics adjust to the increased road-time to bring patients to other hospitals.

A spokesperson for Steward Health Care did not respond to a Reporter inquiry about the status of the EMS station at Carney.

Three-quarters of the patients transported by Boston EMS to Carney originate from locations in Dorchester or Mattapan, according to the city department, That’s roughly 7 percent of total EMS transfers citywide. In 2023, the city department says of the 91,369 patients served citywide, 6,313 were taken to Carney – an average of 17 per day. In 2022, there were 6,769 transfers to Carney. Most patients transferred (72 percent) were between 23 and 65 years old.

Councillor John FitzGerald called the potential impacts to constituents in his district as “catastrophic.”

The current EMS station at the hospital, FitzGerald added, was upgraded eight years ago. Boston EMS says it has operated a station at Carney since 2002.

“We made that investment into that new EMS station at Carney in 2016,” he said. “In eight years, we’re potentially seeing that investment squandered over the closing of this hospital. Over 75 percent of all EMS trips coming to Carney are from Dorchester and Mattapan and they are underserved people. This is huge blow to emergency care for those who use the Carney and speaks about who those services are available to.”

FitzGerald added that he has heard anecdotal stories of people already being turned away from the hospital for follow-up appointments even before the official closing.

“For a non-emergency, it’s not even the future people being affected, but we are hearing that right now there are people being turned away, putting them in a situation where they don’t have medical care,” he said. “We need to know where that medical care is going to come from.”

A state-funded watchdog charged with monitoring the Steward hospitals has made an appeal this week to keep the emergency department at Nashoba Valley Medical Center open for at least another month due to safety concerns raised for the central Massachusetts communities impacted by that Steward hospital's closure.

To date, the Ombudsman — Suzanne Koenig— has not yet made such appeal on behalf of Carney Hospital, although in her memo about Nashoba, she writes: "The Ombudsman further urges the Debtors and other stakeholders to fund the costs of keeping an ambulance at Carney’s ED entrance for at least seven days in the event that critical patients, who are not aware of the ED’s closure, arrive needing emergency services.

Koenig added: "Over the weekend, the Ombudsman was informed that a patient walked into the ED with a gun shot wound needing attention."

A complaint sent to the Attorney General’s office by a Dorchester man last week alleged that Steward Health Care is violating the civil rights of Black and Latino Bostonians by closing Carney Hospital and thus denying “access to healthcare and emergency services that are afforded to others across the City of Boston.”

The complaint also took aim at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for facilitating the closure by allowing Steward to shutter the hospital on an expedited timeline— and for stepping in to prevent the closures of other hospitals, but not Carney.

“This complaint contends that Steward Carney has purposefully allowed the closure of this hospital to prevent access for Black and Latino residents in Dorchester, Mattapan, Roslindale, and Hyde Park,” reads the complaint, which was authored by Dorchester resident Haris Hardaway, who is also a candidate for state representative in the 6th Suffolk District.

He says the closure will cause disproportionate harm to Black and Brown Bostonians by "directly limiting life-saving medical care" and by "impacting the distance that must be traveled to obtain critical care and emergency services."

The Attorney General's office received the complaint but did not offer further comment on its status.

Last week, the state's Department of Public Health issued a seven-page response to Steward Health Care's plan to close Carney Hospital in which state officials conclude that while Carney Hospital "is in fact an essential service necessary for preserving access and health status within the Hospital’s service area," it does not have "the power to mandate that the Hospital remain open."

Reporter editor Bill Forry contributed to this report.