Budget cuts threaten Tewksbury Hospital
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s proposed Fiscal Year 2016 budget would slash funding for Tewksbury Hospital by $3.8 million, resulting in the closing of one unit (which would be consolidated with another). The closure could result in the loss of 12 geriatric beds and the transfer of 16 patients to other wards. The equivalent of 48 full-time jobs would be lost.
However – area legislators, including Rep. James Miceli, D-Wilmington (who represents part of Tewksbury), have vowed to fight the cuts. Miceli lobbied heavily to the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and on April 15, the Committee presented its budget recommendations to the full House, and the budget fully restored funding for Tewksbury Hospital at FY 2015 levels. “I’ve been in office 40 years, and represented Tewksbury for 38 of those 40, and let me say, this has been attempted before and we’ve always managed to reinstate the funding. They are cutting in the wrong place,” Miceli said. The budget will be considered by the full House and then the Senate.
Miceli said the hospital gives the best care to patients who have serious problems. “The care is second to none,” he said. “It fills a vital need and to close a ward now makes no sense whatsoever.”
Miceli said it’s not possible to cut that many positions and move people around, without it affecting care.
“I’ve fought this fight before and I’ll do it again,” Miceli said. “We need that hospital fully staffed and we need that ward open.”
The hospital’s patients include those with developmental disabilities, substance abuse issues, severe mental illness and psychiatric patients who also have serious medical issues.
According to the state Department of Health and Human Services Web site, the 350-bed Tewksbury Hospital “provides services to individuals who have not been able to receive services in other settings.” The hospital includes seven inpatient units for complex chronic medical adult patients and five inpatient units for psychiatric patients. The average patient admitted has been denied placement by three or more health care facilities because of behavioral issues and/or because of high risk history that necessitates increased resources to provide a safe environment, according to the site.
Of the hospital’s approximately $55 million budget, the hospital raises back about two-thirds of the funding in revenue, which goes back into the general fund. For Fiscal 2014, the hospital raised more than $37 million, two million above. “We get a target from the state of how much money we have to return back to the state and in the last five years, we’ve returned more than 100 percent each year,” said Richard Sheehan, chairman of the board of Tewksbury Hospital.
Sheehan said he has “tremendous concerns” about the effect cuts could have on patients. “You’re talking about disrupting 28 lives,” he said, noting that moving patients with serious mental or physical disabilities can be particularly disruptive.
“The hospital takes patients that nobody else will,” Sheehan said. “Where are you going to put these people?” In terms of putting patients in a consolidated unit, Sheehan said patients have a variety of illnesses that may make it difficult to pool them together.
Psychologist Lynda L. Warwick, Ph.D., currently in private practice in Littleton and Chelmsford, said Tewksbury is a different kind of hospital for which there is no substitute.
Warwick wrote to the governor and her representatives, noting that clients sent to Tewksbury who returned a year or more later showed improvement.
“When I got them back, they were invariably a lot better, and able to take advantage of the lesser levels of care when they needed them. I don’t think there’s anywhere to send the people they’d have to discharge that won’t put them at risk of ending right back at the hospital – except there won’t be any beds for them.”