In the ongoing fallout from the Carney Hospital closure, and with a rush of new patients looking for health providers, Dot House Health finances are being squeezed. One casualty in the near term is the center’s swimming pool, which is slated to close this Saturday (Jan. 18).

Michelle Nadow, the CEO of Dot House Health, appeared at the Jan. 7 meeting of the Fields Corner Civic Association to discuss the closure and the center’s plans moving forward.

“We are closing the pool with a heavy heart and know how much the pool means to so many people,” she said. “I wish I could point to some bad actor or someone to blame but there are none and so many have tried to help us keep it open. It runs at a loss of about $170,000 a year and there are $700,000 in repairs that have been needed for years…It costs $40,000 a year just to heat it.”

Editor's note: Officials from DotHouse Health say the $700,000 figure refers to work and funding that has been made to the pool in recent years.

Nadow said they have looked for funding, grants, and partners, but can find no solution other than to close the pool, which hosts programs for young and old, including the popular baby swim, senior swims, and the Dot House Sharks swim team.

One element forcing the decision was last fall’s abrupt closure of the Carney Hospital, which has brought in a surge patients seeking healthcare services. “We provided care for 24,000 people in the community last year, the largest numbers we have ever provided for,” said Nadow.

“We have been getting lower healthcare reimbursements for years,” she continued. “It’s hard for us to cover the non-reimbursable things we offer like the pool in this climate…I think we have to make some difficult choices at this time with very limited resources being that our reimbursements for services we provide are not going to cover the cost of care…Dot House cannot sustain six figure losses annually for the pool.”

Nadow said her team has a meeting with the city coming up to discuss how the pool could operate outside of their funding and operations. “We’d have to find a partner we can work with on this,” she said.

Peggy Flynn, a frequent user of the pool, said that many of the seniors in the neighborhood from all walks of life use the pool, and noted that it is very popular in the Vietnamese and senior communities.

“The decision went out on email in December only to some people and I saw it from a friend,” she said. “It went out in Vietnamese and Spanish only last week…We have a petition with more than 100 signatures that calls for you not to close the pool so we can find resources to fund the pool.” Flynn said the seniors would like to have a public meeting on Thursday of this week before the pool closes.

Nadow said she appreciated the frustration because the pool is important – her own children learned to swim there, she noted . She said she would gladly have a public meeting, but the closure on Saturday must go forward. That said, it doesn’t prevent a partner or other operator from coming in sometime soon to re-open it.

“We’re not going to drain it and we’re not going to fill it in,” she said. “We have no plans for it.”