BERWICK, Pa. — The emergency room was darkish, the doorways locked for months now, and a younger lady stood outdoors within the rain, clutching her abdomen and sobbing. Nobody was popping out to assist.
The frantic individuals who drove the ailing lady to the hospital stood, dumbfounded, within the largely empty parking zone.
“That is insane,” the driving force mentioned. “I’m going to should name 911.”
On Sept. 17, the Pennsylvania Division of Well being shut down Berwick Hospital Heart’s emergency room due to a scarcity of staffing, accelerating a closure its homeowners deliberate out earlier that summer season. Indicators on the doorways nonetheless advise sufferers to move to hospitals in Hazleton, 20 miles to the south, or Bloomsburg, 14 miles west, for emergencies. The 90-bed facility is at the moment working solely as a 14-bed inpatient geriatric psychiatry facility — however not everybody on this city of 10,349 on the Susquehanna River in Columbia County, is aware of that.
On that dreary March morning, the unwell lady was carried again to a automobile to attend for an ambulance. Bette Gray, a Berwick resident and personal medical advocate who fought, unsuccessfully, to maintain the hospital open, was there to speak to The Inquirer. First, she watched her fears unfold.
“Hey, keep awake. Open your eyes,” Gray yelled, to the girl within the automobile, clapping her fingers.
In 1903, physicians in Berwick lamented the closing of a small hospital there. There merely weren’t sufficient sufferers on the time, they instructed a newspaper. A brand new hospital opened, two years later. Berwick’s inhabitants peaked at 14,000 round midcentury and in Might of 1959, the hospital’s present location was opened on sixteenth Avenue to a lot fanfare. The Berwick Enterprise devoted practically a dozen pages to the opening.
“A brand new hospital exhibits a progressive space,” one headline said.
By 1999, the hospital was shedding cash and was offered to Neighborhood Well being Programs for $33 million. The sale, in accordance with a Wilkes-Barre Instances Chief article, marked the primary time a nonprofit hospital was offered to a for-profit firm in Pennsylvania. Twenty years later, the hospital was shedding cash, once more. Complete affected person income down was down from $51 million in 2018 to $33 million in 2020, the yr the hospital and its clinics had been offered to Priyam Sharma, of Michigan, for an undisclosed worth.
The Sharma household, together with Priyam’s husband, Sanjay Sharma, and their son, Sanyam Sharma, have bought and run no less than two different hospitals, one in Galesburg, Sick., and one other in Pontiac, Mich. The household owns a medical college and tried, unsuccessfully, to buy Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital in 2019.
Neither the Sharmas or their chapter legal professional returned a number of requests for remark.
One physician who labored at Berwick mentioned purple flags went up among the many workers shortly after the acquisition, with considerations concerning the billing course of, how information had been being dealt with, and general affected person care. Some staffers contacted the FBI, the physician mentioned. An FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia declined to remark.
A defunct web site for one Sharma affiliate — SBJ Group — claimed the corporate specialised in “hospital turnaround.” The previous Berwick physician believes the Sharmas needed the hospital to fail so it may very well be flipped.
“From day one, they knew what they had been doing,” a former hospital physician, who requested to not recognized, mentioned. “They carried out large layoffs, basically turning working a skeleton crew within the hospital.”
In July, Priyam Sharma notified Pennsylvania’s Division of Well being that she deliberate to transition the power right into a smaller psychiatric hospital. DOH rejected that plan, citing inadequate particulars, however Gray mentioned staffers noticed the writing on the wall and commenced leaving. Sharma, on the time, mentioned there have been too few sufferers to proceed on as a hospital.
“To serve the group, to avoid wasting jobs, to create extra jobs, we have now to have extra heads in beds,” Sharma instructed the Berwick Press Enterprise round that point. “The one means we will do it’s to develop into a psychiatric hospital.”
A month later, in August, Berwick residents crammed a council assembly, urging elected officers to do one thing. Council members mentioned their fingers had been tied. With staffing shortages, DOH stepped in and wound up closing the emergency room. Sharma filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety across the similar time.
One Sharma hospital, 200 miles southwest of Chicago, was closed in January 2021 after the state discovered quite a few well being and security violations. The Sharmas have since offered that hospital. In Pennsylvania, DOH obtained a grievance about Berwick and located that Priyam Sharma was utilizing the outdated reward store as dwelling quarters in lieu of resort rooms when visiting. One former staffer instructed The Inquirer a canine was dwelling there too. The DOH additionally discovered the hospital was missing on-call anesthesia protection and never correctly checking credentials.
“One thing clearly wasn’t proper right here,” Gray mentioned outdoors the hospital.
Gray, a lifelong Berwick resident, is a non-public affected person advocate. She helps sufferers navigate appointments, treatment remedy delays, and procure their medical information. She’s emerged as the largest critic of the hospital’s administration lately. She ran a free well being clinic for eight years and is hoping to open a “micro-hospital” on the town with some former Berwick staff.
“I’m doing this as a result of I care about well being care,” she mentioned.
In accordance with the Pennsylvania Workplace of Rural Well being, 5 rural hospitals have closed since 2005 within the state, although that quantity doesn’t embody others which have shuttered particular models, like emergency care. Nationwide, in accordance with the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace, over 100 rural hospitals closed between January 2013 and February 2020. The Inquirer visited a type of hospitals, 40 miles southwest of Berwick, in 2019. That facility, College of Pittsburgh Medical Heart’s Susquehanna Sunbury Hospital, additionally skilled monetary losses.
Some rural hospitals throughout the county have taken the alternative method to Berwick. They’re refocusing what they’ve left on emergency care.
“We wish to be the power that saves lives,” a hospital administrator in New Mexico instructed Kaiser Well being Information.
Berwick turned to aged psychiatric care as a substitute. Few argue that service isn’t wanted, however many locals are involved about Sharma’s plan to develop capability to 53 beds for psychiatric sufferers of all ages.
“We consider the hospital may very well be utilized in a greater method than that,” mentioned Berwick council member Jeri Wozniak.
Gray mentioned she as soon as spoke to Priyam Sharma about presumably buying the hospital, however the worth was too excessive and dialog didn’t go anyplace. She’s since given up on that concept.
“There’s simply an excessive amount of unhealthy karma now,” Gray mentioned.
Gray mentioned the girl who visited Berwick’s shuttered emergency room survived.