Long before the current fallout from Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy, the effects of its closure of Norwood Hospital in 2020 due to flooding took a toll on Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham.
“We had about a 30%-40% increase overnight in emergency room volume and inpatient activity,” said BID Needham President John Fogarty. It was at the outset of the pandemic, and the hospital faced the double demands of COVID-19 and the significant influx of patients who would previously have gone to Norwood. “The workforce was challenged,” he said. “To be honest, we struggled for a while.” The emergency room now handles almost 30,000 visits each year.
The challenges led to a planning process for future needs that resulted in its recently announced capital campaign. The $40 million fundraising effort launched with a $20 million donation from longtime hospital supporter Valerie Trotman. “It’s a tremendous gift for a community hospital our size,” said Fogarty. “It’s by far the largest gift that BID Needham has ever had.”
The campaign, titled Transforming Health Care Here, will focus on workforce development, access and innovation, and campus enhancements.
“The pandemic had really a disastrous effect on the workforce,” said Fogarty. “So we realized that if we were going to rebuild the workforce we had to look at things differently with our employees, provide more educational opportunities, provide more training, and things like work-life balance, life skills, things that we might not have done five years ago.”
Access to new services that continually meet the needs of the community is central to their vision, said Fogarty. “You have to really be able to innovate these days in health care to be a relevant provider. That means things like robotic surgery, digital mental health programs, hospital-at-home programs.”
Providing those services will mean expanding BID Needham’s capacity and its footprint, and Fogarty said they are still defining what that will look like. Without sharing specifics, he said they are slowly acquiring land nearby the hospital. “There continues to be strong demand for more primary care in this area, increased access to specialties like cardiology, breast surgery, neurology, orthopedics,” he said. “What we’d like to do is create an environment here that the town wants, that really can make BID Needham really more of a health care destination.”
The hospital’s roots in Needham go back more than 100 years, when it was the town-owned Glover Hospital. Sandy Tobin, a longtime Needham resident who was born at “the Glover,” said back in the day it did not have a good reputation. “It was kind of a running joke,” she said. But Tobin said that changed when it became part of the Beth Israel Deaconess system in 1994. “BID has really improved that hospital.”
When her husband, former town counsel David Tobin, was battling brain cancer four years ago, she said his treatment at the Glover — as she still calls it — was exceptional. “They couldn’t have been better,” Tobin said. “He was wheelchair-bound by the end, and every time I drove him in for his daily treatment, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t driving into Longwood. They were right here. And you get just as good care I believe at the Needham hospital as you do at Longwood because it’s all the same doctors.”
BID Needham is part of the Beth Israel Lahey Health network of 14 hospitals, and each entity manages its own operations. As a community hospital, it serves not only Needham but also Dedham, Norwood and Westwood. As a nonprofit, it does not pay taxes to the town, but each year it makes a voluntary payment in lieu of taxes, which includes support for the longstanding Traveling Meals program.
Fogarty said with some 800 employees, the hospital is an economic generator for the town, and it works with local officials to be a good corporate citizen. He said for many residents the presence of the hospital in their community offers a level of comfort and security.
Needham Select Board Chair Kevin Keane said the hospital contributes significantly to the local economy and he considers it a cornerstone of the community. “As the hospital continues to grow and expand its services to meet the increased demand for care, its role in Needham remains essential to ensuring that our community remains healthy and thriving.”
Tobin, who is a real estate agent, said although she doesn’t find that people necessarily move to Needham for the hospital, there’s no question its presence is a benefit to the town. Through her experience during her husband’s treatment for brain cancer, she said, “I found it to be a tremendous asset to the community and to my family.”
Reaching the campaign’s $40 million goal will likely take five years, said Fogarty. “We’re very, very excited about the campaign and the future that I think it’ll provide not just for the hospital, but the community of Needham and surrounding communities.”
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