SPRINGFIELD — Bexie Lopez of Springfield turned to Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Springfield more than a decade ago when her son — then age 9 — had a difficult time adjusting after the sudden violent death of his father.
"He would run away from the classroom," Lopez said Thursday at a rally protesting the imminent planned closure of the hospital's 74 inpatient beds at the end of this month. "He would run away from the classroom and out into traffic saying he wanted to kill himself so he could be with his father."
Today, that troubled child is a young man of 20, doing well and a college student, she said.
"I got my son back," she said describing how Providence not only got him counseling but a counselor for her as well. "Now I'm worried they won’t be there for anybody else."
Providence Behavioral Health’s owners — Mercy Medical Center and its parent Trinity Health operating locally as Trinity Health New England — are going through the state regulatory process now and have not yet received final permission to close the 74 beds, a number that includes 12 pediatric psychiatric beds for children and teens.
Trinity blamed it s inability to hire psychiatrists as well as the low reimbursements paid for mental health care, as well as the age of the facility as reasons to close.
Providence will also move services at its methadone clinic on Mill Street in Springfield to a methadone clinic in Holyoke, also by June 30.
Unions — the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the United Auto Workers — representing workers at Providence rallied Thursday outside the office of Mercy Medical Center Boards of Directors Chairman Paul Mancinone.
"We are going to pull all the levers we can to get this decision reversed," said Rudy Renaud of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. "We need people to listen."
About 200 of 466 employees will lose their jobs. But as nurses pointed out, they are employable elsewhere. The shutdown leaves Western Massachusetts with a shortage of psychiatric beds generally and none for children and adolescents. Troubled youth will have to go to the eastern third of the state, to Connecticut or to the Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont.
Also speaking out Thursday was Nicole Desnoyers who spoke of her troubles getting help for her 10-year-old middle child, Ja-seir who had to go hours away for help.
"Western Massachusetts needs more, not less," she said.
On Thursday, unionized employees said that Trinity has already started shutting down the units at the hospital, refusing to take new patients ahead of its planned closure.
"That's standard operating procedure for these people," said Ron Patenaude, associate director for the division of labor action at the nurse's union. "They set it up to fail."
Trinity spokeswoman Mary Orr said in an email that the hospital evaluates all admissions based on its ability to safely care for each patient, which includes daily staffing levels.
"We continue to also work with our partners and other facilities to ensure that patients receive timely and appropriate care," she wrote. "As of July 1st, we will have no employed full-time board-certified pediatric, adult or geriatric inpatient psychiatrists."
Trinity last week answered state health regulators, who wanted to know how hard it’d worked to recruit psychiatrists.
Providence said that since 2018 it has used dedicated physician recruiters through Trinity Health Of New England , made competitive salary offers, advertised, did direct outreach and hired an outside recruiter.
Trinity Health also reiterated its plans to send patients to other hospitals it owns: Mt. Sinai Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, and Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs, Connecticut . Both hospitals, Trinity said, are accessibly by bus, car services like Uber and Lift or via CTRail’s Hartford Line so families can come and visit.
Both Holyoke Medical Center and Baystate Medical Center have plans for their own inpatient psychiatric faculties. But both, which will be built with for-profit partners, are at least two years in the future.