HAVERHILL - Seven months after taking over Holy Family Hospital from Steward Health Care, Lawrence General Hospital will eliminate medical-surgical and intensive care unit beds at the Haverhill campus, transitioning the facility to a satellite emergency department that also provides inpatient behavioral health care.
Approximately 35 employees out of 256 staff will be impacted by the service change, which is expected to occur in October. The health system has promised to offer them other jobs within the organization.
The change would solidify a subtle erosion of beds and services at the Haverhill hospital dating back to Steward’s ownership. The hospital’s license includes 59 medical-surgical beds, though today only one 32-bed unit is operational. Lawrence General would also permanently close Haverhill’s 10-bed ICU, which Steward silently shuttered without state notice in January 2024.
While medical-surgical beds and ICU beds will close, the health system said emergency services at Haverhill will remain, including ambulance and lab services. The system is looking to expand some other outpatient services, including a sleep medicine center.
Diana Richardson, interim CEO of Lawrence General Hospital and Holy Family Hospital, said in many ways the emergency room will look and feel the same, but if people need to be admitted for inpatient care, they will be transferred to the Methuen campus, Lawrence General or to a tertiary medical center.
The change will be reviewed by the Department of Public Health, and Lawrence filed an essential services closure notification with the state on Thursday. That filing kickstarts a 120-day period that will allow the state to review the closures, though the state has no mechanism to stop them.
The closures come after widescale celebration last fall of the $28 million acquisition of Holy Family’s hospitals in Methuen and Haverhill, which the governor lauded as preserving care in the Merrimack Valley region. On the website for Holy Family Haverhill, Lawrence General announced the transition with a positive, forward-looking note: “We are here for you and here to stay.”
On Thursday, however, Lawrence executives said that medical and surgical inpatient care at Haverhill is underutilized, with an average of eight to 10 patients a day. The operating rooms at the hospital have been shuttered since March 2025, and the only patients being admitted to the hospital were those with minor problems from the emergency department.
Yet Richardson pushed back against the idea that the low utilization of the hospital was merely a result of service changes that Steward had made. She said state working groups set up in the aftermath of the Steward crisis had prioritized a full satellite emergency facility, and were less concerned about the hospital having medical-surgical beds. She also said the broader health system already had capacity in medical-surgical and ICU beds.
“[It] doesn’t make sense to ignore the input of the community through the work group, or maintain beds that are not in demand,” Richardson said. “It’s not the best from a quality and safety perspective to be trying to open beds that are essentially empty, and not a fiscally responsible thing either.”
She also forcefully denied the criticisms some staff have had that Lawrence’s acquisition of Haverhill was a strategic one mainly to benefit Lawrence General’s business.
“There is no intention to say ‘OK we will boost Lawrence at the expense of another facility.’ We need all three of our hospital facilities but also other outpatient locations. We need all of those,” Richardson said. “Having said that, we also have a responsibility to think as a system, and look at our services in response to what our community needs and locate them and find efficiencies where it makes sense.”
Barbara Romano, who has worked in ultrasound at Lawrence General Hospital for more than 20 years, said she had seen patients increasingly going to the Methuen campus over Haverhill, which offered limited services in comparison.
“It’s unfortunate, it really is,” Romano said. “But sometimes cuts have to be made. We’ve been feeling it too.”
The changes caused some concern with locals, including Jackie Desharnais, from Groveland, who said she had used Holy Family in Haverhill in the past with her son for behavioral health needs. Though the hospital is maintaining behavioral health services, she still worried what the service closures would mean for her family.
”Everyone knows you get the best treatment in Boston, but not everyone can do that, I couldn’t,” she said. “Having it right there, being able to even take the bus there, it can make such a difference for the people who need treatment and their families who are visiting them. There aren’t enough beds already, so cutting down further is just going to make that harder.”
The closures come after years of losses for Lawrence, even before its expansion. Most recently, Lawrence reported a $15.9 million operating loss on $340 million in revenue for the year ending in September, compared to a $13.8 million operating loss the year prior. The start of this year has been no better, with a $9.6 million operating loss reported for the six months ending in March.
Jessica Bartlett can be reached at jessica.bartlett@globe.com. Follow her @ByJessBartlett.