Nashoba Valley is celebrating a groundbreaking in Groton Monday for a new emergency medical center.<\/p>\n
A satellite of UMass Memorial Health, the facility will offer key services like scans and mental health treatment areas when it opens in early 2027. Those services were lost when Nashoba Valley Medical Center in nearby Ayer closed last year amid the Steward Health Care bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
After the closure, Groton Fire Chief Arthur Cheeks said the region became a health care desert. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an urgent care. It will have labs, it\u2019ll have treatment beds within the ER … [and] a dedicated helicopter landing pad that can transfer the more ill patients,\u201d Cheeks said. <\/p>\n
Katie Petrossi, who leads Ayer\u2019s council on aging, said the closure had a real impact on local seniors \u2014 and that she looks forward to some of those services returning. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very much saddened by the loss of the hospital here in town,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly no replacement for the hospital that was in Ayer, which was something that older adults were comfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents in 17 local towns went to the now-closed facility for care. It\u2019s strained resources, officials said, and residents have had to wait longer for ambulances. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe area struggled with the loss,\u201d Ayer Fire Chief Tim Johnston said about last year\u2019s closure. \u201cI\u2019m eager to see how things will look once the [satellite emergency facility] is up and running and see the impact on the region in terms of transport times.\u201d<\/p>\n
For emergencies that need a higher level of care, Cheeks said the land for the new facility is close to nearby hospitals like Lowell General and Emerson. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like we\u2019re 20 minutes in any direction,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nashoba Valley is celebrating a groundbreaking in Groton Monday for a new emergency medical center. A satellite of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-175229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}