Closed Norwood Hospital Seeks New Operator

The loss of Norwood Hospital and its 215 beds has deepened the region’s emergency room and hospital capacity shortages. But finding a new hospital operator willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to complete the redevelopment won’t be an easy task.

Since it is no longer open, Norwood was not among the 31 hospitals in eight states that Stewart put up for sale this year. Steward’s license to operate the hospital expires on Nov. 5. But the company has already withdrawn from it, entrusting its future to Medical Properties Trust, an investment firm that bought Steward’s hospital properties across the country in 2016.

As Stewart prepares to leave Massachusetts in disgrace, a landowner and two state legislators are frantically searching for a new operator to take over the century-old Norwood Hospital.

“In all this mess with Stewart, Norwood has lost its way,” said Tom McCabe, director of development at the Autism League School in nearby Walpole, which used to send playground-injured students to the hospital but now relies on local urgent care centers.

Still, officials in this 31,000-person neighborhood southwest of Boston believe their hospital — which has long held a place of honor near the city’s downtown — will reopen someday. It’s inevitable, said Tony Mazzucco, the city’s CEO, even as he acknowledges it could take years.

Mazzucco suggested the need to reopen the hospital would be due to the region’s healthcare infrastructure being overwhelmed. “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.”

Of course, the reason Norwood Hospital closed was the high tide.

Heavy rains and flooding destroyed an electrical room on June 28, 2020, cutting power to the facility and forcing the evacuation of about 90 patients. Since then, ambulances have rushed patients to other hospitals from Needham to Boston, often more than a half-hour away.

“We need Norwood Hospital,” said Lisa Corrigan, president of South Shore Staffing in Canton, which used to provide 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.”

Where the hospital once stood, there is now a huge construction site. Huge mounds of earth and piles of building materials have been piled up in front of the massive, 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 more than a dozen communities where the hospital used to operate. “And it breaks my heart to see this empty shell of a building.”

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

At Guarino’s Bakery, 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 cakes for hospital employees celebrating their birthdays, with cherries on top. People in Italy brought Italian cookies to their loved ones in the hospital.

After the building was condemned, Steward paid for its demolition and then began work on a $375 million reconstruction project. The contractor, Suffolk Construction, laid a new foundation and steel frame before Steward ran out of money last year and stopped paying its bills.

But this summer, there were signs of life at the hospital on Washington Street, where workers built a roof, installed a heating and cooling system and added windows and metal panels to seal the structure from the elements. Suffolk is “weatherproofing the building” ahead of the winter, said Suffolk Executive Vice President Jason Seaburg, who leads the health care division.

As for the project’s target completion date, Seaburg said, “Based on design, construction and permitting, it would probably take us at least two years (to reopen) if we started tomorrow.”

First, the hospital needs an operator. Alabama-based Medical Properties Trust paid for the work this summer. But completing the reconstruction will require a huge investment from whoever takes it on.

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

“It’s been closed for four years, three months, 12 days and I’m not sure how many minutes,” state Rep. John Rogers, whose district includes Norwood and Walpole, said earlier this month. “It’s something I wake up every morning and go to bed every night thinking about.”

Medical Properties Trust, known as MPT, sent a letter to the Norwood Building Department last April informing the city it should be listed as the property owner and take over the redevelopment.

“MPT has accepted and assumed all of Steward’s rights, interests and obligations under all agreements, permits and licenses related to the construction of the new replacement hospital,” the letter, first reported by the Norwood Record, said.

Who will take over the license or get a new one is the subject of much speculation in and around Norfolk County. Mazzucco said MPT is actively marketing the property to hospital owners nationwide. An MPT spokesman did not respond to a request for information about the plans.

Some Beacon Hill lawmakers are also trying to drum up interest in taking over the hospital, especially among nonprofit health systems in Massachusetts that have the resources to fund a rebuild.

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

The House version, authored by Rogers, specifically named Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest health care system, as a candidate. Although Rogers said he had discussed the idea informally with MGB board members, whom he did not name, an MGB spokesman said last week, “Mass General Brigham does not intend to operate Norwood Hospital.”

Although Rogers and Rush’s amendments were not adopted, Rogers said they were intended to underscore the need for an operator to step forward. Lawmakers filed new legislation this month authorizing UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest hospital system in Central Massachusetts, to operate Norwood.

A spokesman for UMass Memorial in Worcester, however, said that system also has no interest in taking over Norwood Hospital.

In addition to the money it would take to rebuild Norwood Hospital and bring it back into operating condition, any buyer would face one additional challenge left by Steward, which sold the land and buildings on which its hospitals sit: It would have to pay rent to a landlord in a state where nearly all of its rivals own real estate.

“It’s a strategic location near the Route 128 corridor,” said health care consultant Marc Bard, CEO of consulting firm MB2, who nonetheless admitted he was skeptical that there would be a line of buyers. “It’s an expensive way to get beds for these health systems.”

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Robert Weisman can be contacted at [email protected].