Closed Norwood Hospital seeks new operator

The loss of Norwood Hospital and its 215 beds has exacerbated the shortage of emergency and inpatient services in the region. But finding a new hospital operator willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to complete its rebuild will not be an easy task.

Because it is no longer open, Norwood was not among the 31 hospitals in eight states that Steward put up for sale this year. Steward’s license to operate the hospital expires Nov. 5. But the company has already exited, handing its future over to Medical Properties Trust, an investment firm that bought Steward’s hospital real estate nationwide in 2016.

And as Steward prepares to leave Massachusetts in disgrace, the landowner and two state legislators are scrambling to find a new operator to take over the centuries-old Norwood Hospital.

“In all this mess with Steward, Norwood got lost,” said Tom McCabe, director of development at the League School for Autism in nearby Walpole, which once sent students injured on the playground to the hospital but now relies on area urgent care centers.

Still, officials in this suburb of 31,000 southwest of Boston believe their hospital, which has long occupied a prime spot near downtown, will one day reopen. It’s inevitable, said Tony Mazzucco, the city’s chief administrative officer, though he acknowledges it could take years.

Mazzucco suggested the region’s strained health care infrastructure will dictate the hospital’s return. “It’s just a matter of time,” he said. “I was there the night the hospital was evacuated. I’ll be there when we open the doors, no matter what.”

It was, of course, the flooding that caused the closure of Norwood Hospital.

On June 28, 2020, heavy rains and flooding destroyed its electrical room, knocking out power to the facility and forcing the evacuation of about 90 patients. Since then, ambulances have been transporting patients to other hospitals, from Needham to Boston, often more than a half-hour drive away.

“We need Norwood Hospital,” said Lisa Corrigan, president of South Shore Staffing in Canton, which once provided administrative and payroll staff to the hospital. “In the time it takes to get to Needham or Faulkner (in Jamaica Plain), a lot of bad things can happen.”

The site where the hospital once stood is now a massive construction site, with giant mounds of dirt and piles of building materials stacked in front of a towering skeletal structure that could one day house a new hospital.

“I drive by it every day,” said Tom O’Rourke, president of the Norwood-based Neponset River Regional Chamber, which represents businesses in a dozen communities once served by the hospital. “And my heart sinks when I see this empty shell of a building.”

O’Rourke, a former patient at Norwood Hospital, said his mother worked there and two of his children were born there. Because the hospital’s 1,000 employees were an economic boon to many small businesses in the area, he said, “the hospital closing was a double whammy.”

At Guarino’s Bakery, located a block from the construction site, “everyone misses Norwood Hospital,” said co-owner Sandi Guarino. The shop, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, once baked birthday cakes for hospital employees and topped the cakes with cherries. Italian cookies that residents would bring to their loved ones in the hospital.

After the building was condemned, Steward financed its demolition and then launched a $375 million reconstruction project. The contractor, Suffolk Construction, installed new foundations and a new steel structure before Steward ran out of money last year and stopped paying his bills.

But there were signs of life this summer at the Washington Street hospital site, where workers built a roof, installed a heating and air-conditioning system and added windows and metal panels to protect the structure from the elements. Suffolk is “weather-sealing the building” before winter, said Jason Seaburg, Suffolk’s executive vice president who leads its health care division.

As for the target date for completion of the project, Seaburg said, “Between design, construction and permitting, we’re probably at least two years away (from reopening) if we started tomorrow.”

The hospital first needs an operator. Alabama-based Medical Properties Trust financed the work this summer. But completing the rebuild will require a massive investment from whoever does it.

Finding a new owner to reopen Norwood Hospital is a pressing concern for surrounding communities.

“It’s been four years, three months, 12 days since the shutdown, and I don’t know exactly how many minutes it lasted,” state Rep. John Rogers, whose district includes Norwood and Walpole, said earlier this month. “It’s something I think about every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed.”

Medical Properties Trust, known as MPT, sent a letter to the Norwood Building Department last April, informing the city that it should be listed as the owner of the property and that it was assuming responsibility for overseeing the reconstruction.

“MPT has accepted and assumed all rights, interests and obligations of Steward in all contracts, permits and licenses relating to the construction of the new replacement hospital,” he wrote in his letter, which was first reported by the weekly Norwood Record.

The question of who will take over the license or be re-licensed is the subject of much speculation in and around Norfolk County. Mazzucco said MPT has been actively marketing the property to hospital owners nationwide. An MPT spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on its plans.

Some Beacon Hill lawmakers are also working to drum up interest in taking over the hospital, particularly from Massachusetts nonprofit health systems that have the resources to fund the rebuild.

In the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ fiscal 2025 budget, an amendment proposed by Rogers and state Sen. Michael Rush would have allowed the Healey administration to approve the sale of Norwood to a qualified health care provider.

The House version, written by Rogers, specifically mentioned Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest health system, as a candidate. Although Rogers said he has discussed the idea informally with MGB board members, whom he did not identify, an MGB spokesperson said last week, “Mass General Brigham is not seeking to manage Norwood Hospital.”

Although Rogers and Rush’s amendments did not pass, Rogers said they were intended to underscore the need for an operator to come forward. Lawmakers introduced a new bill this month that would allow UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest hospital system in central Massachusetts, to operate Norwood.

A spokesman for UMass Memorial in Worcester, however, said the system also was not interested in acquiring Norwood Hospital.

Beyond the reconstruction dollars it would have to invest to get Norwood Hospital back up and running, any buyer would face an additional challenge left by Steward, who sold the land and buildings on which his hospitals sit: He would have to pay rent to a landlord in a state where nearly all of his rivals own property.

“It’s a strategic location near the Route 128 corridor,” said Marc Bard, a health care consultant and managing director of consulting firm MB2, who nonetheless admitted he was skeptical that buyers would come forward. “It’s an expensive way for these health systems to acquire beds.”

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You can contact Robert Weisman at [email protected].