In the News

SPRINGFIELD — As numbers of coronavirus patients at Baystate Medical Center continue to drop, health administrators and political leaders are crediting the dedicated essential workers who have helped care for patients who have contracted the virus.

Mark A. Keroack, president and CEO, of Baystate Health, said the hospital has experienced losses, but also many success cases since the pandemic began.

“We have taken care of over 1,000 COVID-19 patients, sadly we have have grieved the loss of over 200, but we continue to celebrate that in over 800 cases we have been able to successfully discharge patients either to their homes or skilled nursing facilities,” he said.

Keroack said funding was not really considered when it came to creating a dedicated unit for patients and mobilizing essential workers.

“In the early days we were scrambling and we were not thinking about how to pay for everything. We shut down services to build surge capacity, we spent ten times more than we usually did on personal protective equipment, and when all was said and done we basically were looking to be about $200 million off budget by the end of the year,” he said.

Keroack said the CARES Act Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, spearheaded by U.S. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, who is chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, was critical to the medical center’s work.

“That funding has been critical to us being solvent and remaining viable as a system,” he said.

“The essential workers have been critical,” said Neal, while standing outside the hospital before going in to meet with members of Baystate’s staff who have worked in the dedicated COVID-19 unit. “These are the people who were exhausted day after day. They gave up holiday time, they came to work.”