In the News

The new North Adams Regional Hospital won’t have to worry about money like the old one.

Berkshire Health Systems announced Thursday that NARH has been deemed a critical access hospital. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved the designation on July 31, which applies retroactively to July 12.

Since opening in March, NARH has provided outpatient services to people while waiting on the vital designation, which frees up federal Medicare and Medicaid money.

“Reestablishing inpatient beds at the new North Adams Regional Hospital is a key component of our organization’s strategy to keep health care services and care close to home, as often as possible,” BHS CEO Darlene Rodowicz said in a news release Thursday.

In an interview with The Eagle on Thursday, Rodowicz noted that the designation means NARH can become a swing bed facility: Critical access hospitals with swing bed services allow patients to recover from acute care in the hospital, rather than a nursing home, before heading home.

“More importantly, the designation allows us to know we’ll be able to keep the hospital open because the cost of Medicare and Medicaid services we provide will be fully reimbursed,” Rodowicz said. “We give up the opportunity to create a profit margin. For Medicare and Medicaid, we won’t have a loss, but the best we’ll do is break even.”

Rodowicz hopes there will be a high enough volume of commercial insurers such as Blue Cross, United, Cigna and Health New England “to at least break even and hopefully create a small margin.” A 1 percent or 2 percent profit margin would allow the health system to “be able to continue to make the capital investments health care requires.”

The hospital at this time has the staff to fill up to 12 beds. Under the current plan, the number of beds could increase to 18.

Rodowicz credited U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, as well as the Berkshire delegation of state legislators and others in the region.

Neal said in the release that the designation will have “an enormous impact on the Northern Berkshire community.

“This designation works to resolve stark inequities in rural and underserved communities as it relates to our nation’s health system,” Neal wrote. “I have long advocated for legislation that addresses health equity, allowing everyone to have a fair and just opportunity to achieve their highest level of health, regardless of who they are or where they live.”

After multiple surveys from the state Department of Public Health on behalf of CMS, NARH has achieved a yearlong goal with its critical access hospital designation.

Apart from the widely recognized need to get a hospital back in North Adams after NARH abruptly closed in 2014, the main reason BHS was able to open the facility was a change in federal guidelines that would allow for NARH to become a critical access hospital.

The designation triggers increased cost-based reimbursement for provided services, which Rodowicz has said would prevent a reopened North Adams Regional Hospital from operating at a loss. Before the federal change, which was finalized last year, a hospital with inpatient care in the city was not viewed as financially viable.

“I am pleased,” Neal said, “that the work of my colleagues in Congress working with the Biden/Harris administration has led to this Critical Access Hospital designation for North Adams Regional Hospital.”

Obtaining the designation was years in the making. Rodowicz said, “It’s been 10 years of watching the regulations and hoping there’d be a time North Adams would be eligible for a critical access hospital.”