Steward closes infusion center at Good Samaritan

Financially troubled Steward Health Care has temporarily closed the standalone hematology oncology infusion center at its Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, forcing scores of patients being treated for cancer and blood disorders to look elsewhere for care. The move, which Steward attributed to staffing issues, comes amid mounting stress on the state health care system, as patients wait for long stretches in some emergency rooms. Meanwhile, officials from the Healey Administration are huddling this week with regional health providers worried that hospitals operated by Steward may close or scale back service in low-income Massachusetts communities. “We had no notice” when Good Samaritan’s infusion center shut its doors on April 4, said Sue Joss, chief executive of Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, which refers patients needing specialized care to hospitals in the area. “We called them to book a patient and were told they couldn’t book the patient because that was their last day.” In an April 1 letter to doctors, Steward Medical Group chief operating officer Bianca Duff said services at its Regional Hematology/Oncology & Infusion practice, located at Good Samaritan, “will be temporarily unavailable,” citing the departure of its medical director as the main reason. The letter, obtained by The Globe, said Steward is “working with highly skilled and experienced providers at other sites to ensure that patients receive their necessary ongoing care.” It advised health care providers to refer new cancer and blood disease patients to a Signature Healthcare center in Brockton, a Dana-Farber operation at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, and a Steward Medical Group site in Taunton. Josephine Martin, a spokeswoman at Steward, said the Good Samaritan infusion center “is temporarily paused while we recruit a new provider and staff.” She said Steward is in regular communications with the state Department of Public Health about the move. The full scope of the disruption in care wasn’t immediately clear. Martin said 69 patients at the Good Samaritan infusion center were referred elsewhere. But some Brockton-area doctors who received the Steward letter apparently notified a larger group of patients they monitor, including some who were treated at the infusion center in the past.