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The future of emergency care remains uncertain at the soon-to-close Union Hospital.
By THOMAS GRILLO
LYNN — No decisions have been made about the future of emergency care at Union Hospital after it closes in 2019.
Members of the Emergent/Urgent Care Planning Group, which includes hospital executives, public officials, and residents, met at City Hall on Monday in a two-hour meeting that was closed to the press and public.
Dr. David J. Roberts, president of the North Shore Medical Center (NSMC), said the meeting was one of many to determine the scope of emergency room services NSMC will provide in Lynn after Union shutters its campus.
“Our goal is to keep some form of emergency care, hopefully at the Union campus, but that will depend on who buys it,” he said.
It could be located in another Lynn location, he said.
Last year, the state Department of Public Health unanimously approved a $180 million expansion of NSMC that will close Union and move the beds to the new Salem campus in 2019. The medical facilities in Lynn and Salem are a part of Partners HealthCare. They recently posted the biggest annual operating loss in its 22-year history when it reported $108 million in losses on operations in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2016.
The panel has been discussing whether to provide full emergency room services or urgent care, Roberts said.
A complete ER accepts ambulances and all comers no matter how sick, embedded into a hospital that provides other services, such as surgery, he said. Urgent care is where patients go when they are not desperately ill, but have an acute condition that must be dealt with immediately.
“Having an emergency room absent all of the support services may not be the way to go,” Roberts said. “But this committee is evaluating all of this and no decision has been made.”
Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy, a member of the panel, said they are making progress toward consensus about what the future of health care in Lynn will look like.
State Sen. Thomas McGee (D-Lynn), who also serves on the committee, said these are ongoing meetings that discuss options for when the hospital closes.
When Roberts was asked why the meeting excluded the public, he referred the question to Laura Fleming, a hospital spokeswoman.
“These sessions have always been closed to the public,” she said. “I don’t know why and I don’t have a well thought out answer. No one has ever asked me that question before.”
Thomas Grillo can be reached at tgrillo@itemlive.com.