It has been four months since the state-assisted euthanasia of Carney Hospital, the scrappy, once-vital outpost of essential health care needs for tens of thousands of people on the south side of Boston. The end – when it came late last summer – came swiftly without the “mandatory” 90-day notice that state regulators and the governor could have required of the Steward robber barons who presided over Carney’s demise.

It came without the commitment of tens, even hundreds of millions in state dollars committed to assist the transition of care in other communities.

The state’s Dept. of Public Health held a hastily organized, perfunctory hearing at Florian Hall a few weeks before the doors were sealed shut. The four-hour-long meeting was part wake, part union rally and entirely without a purpose other than to check a box for state health officials who were under strict orders to pull the plug on the Carney so that other hospital deals honchoed by the Healey administrators – to benefit other communities – wouldn’t be compromised.

What has happened in the months that followed?

In October, a “working group” of 33 men and women – recruited and appointed mainly by Mayor Wu and her team at the Boston Public Health Commission – has been assembled to assess the damage done by the Carney closure and, hopefully, to make recommendations about what could come next on the mostly abandoned Dot Ave. campus.

The group has met twice (privately and without press in the room) since its formation and is due to meet again this Friday.

On Monday, the BPHC announced that it will convene a “community listening session” next Thursday (Dec. 12) at the Sheet Metal Workers union hall in Lower Mills. The meeting, which starts at 5:30 p.m., will be the one-and-only public meeting before the appointed panel offers recommendations, probably sometime in late winter or early spring.

It’s important to note that there are other ways for members of the public to offer comment about the loss of the Carney – and about what we’d like to see happen next at the campus. The city has a web page set up with a link that will be live until Dec. 16.

Some of the feedback that will inform the working group’s discussions has already been solicited through a door-to-door canvass operation led by the non-profit Health Care for All organization.

Next Thursday’s meeting could end up being yet another fruitless hand-wringing affair. And maybe there’s some value in giving people who’ve been so clearly wronged – both by the corporate raiders in Texas and the cold-shouldered beancounters on Beacon Hill – a chance to vent. The powers-that-be should get a full accounting of just how unjust it is to close a busy emergency room in the city’s biggest and most disadvantaged neighborhoods and, as a result, put our lives at greater risk.

A far better outcome, though, will be for those of us most impacted by Carney’s demise to look beyond the debris left in Steward’s wake and tell leaders what we fully expect to get for our sacrifice to date. It’s not good enough for elected officials at any level to wait for “the market to speak.”

The state’s ample coffers have been activated to stand up replacement services across the Commonwealth. The people of Dorchester and Mattapan should expect the same – with interest.

Whatever model and mix of a public health facility comes next on Dorchester Avenue, it had better come with a package of state resources that mirrors the commitments promised – and in some cases – already delivered to our neighbors elsewhere in the state.

Dorchester and Mattapan have been made to carry this burden alone. That cannot stand.

Bill Forry is the executive editor and co-publisher of the Dorchester Reporter. Follow him on BlueSky social.