The sudden closure of the maternity unit at UMass Memorial-Health Alliance Hospital in Leominster two and a half years ago has led to reported safety risks for mothers and a strain on local emergency resources.
First responders say they are now delivering more babies in ambulances because patients must travel at least half an hour for hospital care as opposed to a few minutes if they live in Leominster.
The facility served a population of more than 100,000 people in the Leominster-Fitchburg area. While hospital officials cited staffing shortages and declining birth rates as the reasons for the closure, a state audit released in November questioned the management of $6.2 million in state grants intended for the health care system.
Theresa Kogut, a mother from Townsend, experienced pregnancy complications in September 2023 while the maternity ward at Leominster was in the process of closing. Kogut was diagnosed with subchorionic hematoma, a condition that placed her at risk for miscarriage or stillbirth. Because of the closure, her drive time for medical care doubled to an hour as she had to travel to Emerson Hospital in Concord.
Kogut said the distance created significant logistical and emotional challenges.
“Sometimes I would have issues where I would go in the middle of the night to the hospital and doing that, trying to arrange childcare for my older two and then drive an hour, it really delayed the time I was able to get care,” Kogut said.
She described the hour-long commute as being “full of anxiety” because she did not know what might happen during the trip. Because her first two labors were fast, Kogut scheduled an induction for her third child to ensure she reached the hospital safely.
She gave birth to a healthy daughter in April 2024.
The closure has also changed the operations for local emergency services.
Leominster Fire Chief Robert Sideleau said his teams have delivered significantly more babies inside ambulances since the unit shut down. Sideleau said the department is not designed to handle the frequency of these specialized calls.
“It’s kind of not fair for the first responder system, we’re not built for that,” Sideleau said. “We have to commit an ambulance with two EMT firefighters and a paramedic and now we’ve lost them for the next call.
When a pregnancy call requires transport to a distant hospital, Leominster loses half of its emergency resources for at least 90 minutes. Chief Sideleau said this forces the city to rely on mutual aid from smaller neighboring towns. Sideleau described a “round robin” effect where Leominster pulls an ambulance from Lunenberg, which then must pull resources from Ayer if another call occurs. He noted that this pattern can quickly deplete the available emergency resources for the entire region.
Leominster Mayor Dean Mazzarella said community frustration grew following a state audit released in November. The audit questioned how UMass Memorial Health utilized $6.2 million in state grants between 2020 and 2023. According to the audit, the hospital created a health disparity for central Massachusetts by failing to invest those funds into the maternity workforce.
Mazzarella said he believes the hospital had the financial resources to keep the ward open. “They did have the financial means to save it and to bring it back,” Mazzarella said.
UMass Memorial Health defended its use of the grant money, stating the funds were used for COVID-19 pandemic bonuses for front-line workers. A spokesperson for the hospital disagreed with the audit’s claim that the funding could have prevented the closure. The hospital maintained that staffing shortages and a steady decline in births in North Central Massachusetts over several years necessitated the decision to close the unit.
“UMass Memorial Health (UMMH) received federal COVID-19 relief funding beginning in 2020 based upon the pandemic’s impact on our community. Funding was allocated to fiscally strained hospitals designated by the Center for Health Information Analysis as high public pay hospitals.
As documented in records provided to the Office of the State Auditor (OSA), these funds were used to provide appreciation bonuses to thousands of front-line employees, including nurses and other staff, in recognition of their dedication and sacrifices during an unprecedented global health crisis. By doing so, UMMH fully complied with all provisions and requirements related to its receipt of these funds.
UMMH disagrees with OSA’s assertion that UMMH could have used the funds to maintain HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital’s inpatient maternity unit. For several years, well-documented workforce shortages exacerbated the challenges of fully staffing the unit consistently, despite our persistent attempts to recruit and retain clinicians in this region. This, along with the steadily declining number of births in North Central Massachusetts, had a significant impact on our unit’s ability to continue to provide the best possible labor and delivery care to our patients and contributed to the need to close the unit.”
— UMass' full statement
Local officials noted that the regional health care burden increased further when Nashoba Valley Regional Hospital closed approximately one year after the Leominster maternity unit.
Mayor Mazzarella said that while the city must move on, the loss of the local birthing center remains a significant issue. “Delivering babies, it’s a wonderful thing, but there’s a lot of things that could go wrong and it’s a big hit on us,” Mazzarella said.
Chief Sideleau expressed concern about the long-term viability of emergency services if more local resources are lost.
“What’s next? We lost maternity, if we lost something else, it’s unsustainable,” Sideleau said.
The chief said he hopes the state will dedicate more funding or health care resources to the region in the future.
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