“The Department has made a finding that the Hospital is in fact an essential service necessary for preserving access and health status within the Hospital’s service area.”  So said the Mass Department of Public Health (DPH) in a statement on Aug. 19, 2024. 

The hospital it refers to is the Carney Hospital. Twelve days later, DPH allowed it to close. Since then, health care advocates and elected officials have begged the Commonwealth to re-open the emergency room and psychiatry beds, but DPH hasn’t budged. They need to reconsider their stance.

The Carney campus sits on 12 acres of land with 728,348 square feet of “living area,” according to the city’s Assessing Department. But Mayor Wu has already declared that the property will not be re-zoned and can only be used for a hospital or health care use. 

The DPH’s website states its purpose this way: “DPH promotes and protects health and wellness and prevents injury and illness for all people. We prioritize racial equity in health by improving equitable access to quality public health and health care services and partnering with communities most impacted by health inequities and structural racism.” 
There is a perfect match between DPH’s mission and the repurposing of the Carney, which represents a tremendous opportunity to provide the services that can make the Dorchester/Mattapan community healthier. 

Many people have begun to reimagine the Carney and how it can be re-created to accommodate services needed to “promote and protect health” in an area that suffers from poor health outcomes.  Beyond re-establishing an emergency room and the three floors of psychiatric beds, the following ideas are being discussed:

• An urgent care center in the area formerly used as an ambulatory care center, operated by a consortium of community health centers
• A unit for emergency room patients who have been discharged but have no place to go for recovery
• A unit for treatment for those suffering from Substance Use Disorder
• Creation of a surgi-center for low acuity operations
• A unit for behavioral health patients who would otherwise have to stay in the emergency room while waiting placement.

But, ultimately, these ideas hinge on who has possession of the Carney property, which is still owned by Apollo Global Management, an Australian asset firm with US offices in New York.  

Trying to make sense of the value of Steward hospital properties is a difficult proposition.  The auction sale of the hospitals this summer was done with urgency, as Steward attorneys warned that Steward did not have enough money to continue hospital operations into the fall.  In addition, the auction involved the sale of the hospital business, owned by Steward, and the hospitals as properties, owned by Medical Properties Trust (MPT), located in Alabama.  But the properties were mortgaged to Apollo, which received most of the money from the sale. 

Presumably, the goal was to make back the $1.2 billion that the properties were sold for.  The Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center received no “qualified bids,” which was defined as bids that would result in a payback to the property owners, and as a result, Carney and Nashoba are still owned/mortgaged by MPT/Apollo. 

Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton and the license to operate St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton were sold to Boston Medical Center for $140 million, but that did not include the St. Elizabeth’s property.  Instead, Gov. Healey authorized the taking of St. Elizabeth Hospital’s property by eminent domain for a reported $4.5 million, a sum that has been rejected by Apollo. The actual cost will likely be determined in court if they cannot come to terms on a sale price.
Lawrence General Hospital purchased Holy Family Hospital’s two campuses in Methuen and Haverhill for $28 million.  Lifespan Health, a consortium of four hospitals in Rhode Island, purchased both Morton Hospital in Taunton and St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River for $175 million.

None of these deals are helpful in figuring out a realistic price for the Carney’s campus.   When the Steward hospitals were sold to the MPT in 2016, the Carney property was valued by MPT at an astonishing $263 million (of the $1.2 billion price tag for all Steward’s Massachusetts hospitals). Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that “the prices MPT paid, combined, were nine times what Steward paid for them several years earlier, property records show.”

It is unclear what comparison property sales MPT/Apollo used to determine that value, when the assessed value of the Carney in 2016 by Boston’s Assessing Department was only $52,518,000.  In 2024, the city has assessed the Carney’s value at $76,196,000.  Since the property received no “qualified bid,” the implication is that the assessed value is higher than the market value for health care facilities in Dorchester.  In addition, there is no hospital business anymore to sell.

So why not seize the property by eminent domain?  If St. Elizabeth’s $4.5 million eminent domain seizure figure was determined by being higher than the highest bid received for the property, then Carney should be seized for even less and turned over to the City of Boston, with the goal of creating a health care campus for the Dorchester/Mattapan area.

The state could also offer a figure closer to the assessed value, say $25 million, for this 12-acre parcel with hundreds of thousands of square feet of space that, according to Mayor Wu, can only be used for a hospital or health care facility. As to where the money could come from, a $25 million offer would be just 4 percent of the recent $600 million tobacco settlement that is now in the state’s coffers.  

Boston Medical Center declined to bid on Carney citing “years of underinvestment that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.” Sources familiar with the decision tell me that bringing Carney’s physical plant up to current licensure standards would be cost prohibitive.

But I am not suggesting that Carney be re-opened as an inpatient hospital.  Instead, we should focus on the recently renovated emergency room with 11 private exam rooms, the ambulatory care center, and the psychiatric units that until a couple of weeks ago were licensed by DPH. The use of the rest of the facility can be determined by a commission made up of community residents and health experts that would be charged with investigating and determining the usefulness and efficacy of the ideas I cite above, and other ideas that will be generated.

It is important that the Commonwealth not allow this opportunity to pass.  Purchase of the Carney by the state will allow for re-creating the parts of the hospital that are called “essential” by DPH, with lots of room for badly needed current and future services.  It’s a no brainer.  

Bill Walczak is a Reporter columnist and a former CEO and president of Codman Square Health Center. He also served as president of Carney Hospital in 2010-2011.