The Boston Globe reports today that Steward Health Care System intends to close in-patient services at Quincy Medical Center on Dec. 1. What does this mean for Carney Hospital, which is also owned and managed by Steward?

While Steward officials are careful not to say this explicity: Quincy’s loss may be Dorchester’s gain.

Dr. Mark Girard, president of Steward Hospital Group, says that the $20 million that the company has been losing per year at Quincy will be directed back to the overall hospital group. That, he says, will help other hospitals that Steward owns, including Carney.

“By closing [Quincy] as an inpatient, it will only strengthen the rest of the network by investing in places like Carney with resources and construction and services that people at Carney need,” said Girard.

Steward acquired Quincy Medical Center in 2011, one year after it purchased the Carney and several other hospitals from the Archdiocese of Boston-owned Caritas Christi Health Care system. When it took over the Carney and the Caritas assets, Steward agreed to keep Carney open for a minimum of years as a condition of the sale approved by Attorney General Martha Coakley. Steward executives have repeatedly stated that they intend to keep the Dorchester hospital open— and have added a suite of new units for surgical procedures in recent years. The hospital is about to build-out an enhanced Family Medicine department in the Seton Medical Building at the rear of the Carney complex.

In Quincy, Girard said that Steward intends to create a new, state-of-the-art urgent care center to meet the needs of that community. Inpatient demand from the 196-bed hospital, he said, will be shifted to other Steward hospitals, including Carney, which will be looped into a shuttle transportation system between Steward assets in Quincy, Dorchester and St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton.

He told the State House News Service that Quincy Medical Center was financially unsustainable because of competition from Boston-area medical centers, Medicare reimbursement cuts and Medicaid underfunding, as well as rate disparity— in addition to the lack of inpatient admissions.

"On an average day, only 1/5 of all beds are occupied and it has become abundantly clear that local residents no longer seek inpatient services from Quincy Medical Center," Girard said.

“For predominantly inpatient care, or outpatient that can't be met in Quincy itself, there is a chance that some of that volume will go to Carney, but that's patient choice,” said Girard. “In Dorchester, there is a need for inpatient care.”

Carney is in a better financial position than Quincy at the moment, according to Girard, but he stressed that Steward did not make an “either or” decision in closing Quincy’s hospital.

“Operationally, we’ve dramatically improved quality and patient services at Carney,” said Dr. Girard. “We are adding more behavioral services there to meet need in that community and it’s continuing to improve. We're happy with where we are at Carney.”

Girard said that some employees may be shifted from Quincy to Dorchester, but “only to the extent that they have open positions.”

“They will not displace anyone at Carney,” Girard said.

Reaction to the Steward decision rippled through Dorchester’s health care system today. Harbor Health Services CEO Dan Driscoll, who oversees Neponset Health Center and Geiger-Gibson Health Center among other assets, said Quincy Medical Center’s closure was not a surprise, but “this all broke very suddenly.”

Harbor Health's Dorchester health centers— and the Elder Service Plan it runs— have relationships to send patients to neighboring hospitals including Quincy Medical Center, Carney Hospital, and Boston Medical Center.

“We’ll be looking at making sure we have a good alternative hospital. We are looking initially at the Carney,” Driscoll said.

On Thursday afternoon, Driscoll and his staff were working to count how many of his roughly 18,000 patients will be affected by the hospital’s inpatient closure and which hospitals would be able to absorb their patients.

“It’s a significant number for us,” Driscoll said. “It’s enough that we’re running around and scrambling today. We’ve got calls scheduled with Steward about transitioning some of these people to the Carney and we’re talking with our own staff. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

“There’s a lot of moving parts on this. We have to talk to people at the Carney and see what their capacity is as well as the needs of our patients that would have been going to Quincy. And also talk to the medical staff and see what they can handle.”

Another major step is communicating with patients to let them know Quincy Medical Center will no longer be an option for in-patient services. Many of the Harbor Health patients are in Dorchester, but there is a good spread of people living in Weymouth, Hingham, and Dedham, who could be more inclined to go to South Shore Hospital than over the bridge in Neponset to the Carney.

“We have hospitals that we would like people to go to, that we have strong relationships with and where we think care is good, like the Carney, but people can go to whichever hospitals they like,” Driscoll said.

Material from the State House News Service was added to this article.