Home Care In Sharon, CT

Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy (OHS) issued its proposed decision Monday to deny Nuvance Health’s request to close down Sharon Hospital’s labor and delivery ward. It is just one of several rural hospitals in Connecticut that has recently proposed closing their labor and delivery wards.

The OHS decision said that closure would result in “‘less diversity of health care providers and less patient choice in the geographic region.” The nearest maternity ward to Sharon Hospital is 25 miles away, or a roughly 40-minute drive.

Andrea Rynn, assistant vice president of public relations at Nuvance Health, wrote in a statement that Nuvance was “deeply disappointed” in the OHS decision.

“This hospital faces serious financial hardships and a very under-utilized maternity unit with declining births and considerable operational costs,” Rynn said.

The Connecticut Hospital Association issued a statement in opposition to the state’s decision to keep the ward open, saying rising healthcare costs and underfunded Medicaid have made it impossible for some hospitals to afford to keep their maternity wards open.

“Staffing shortages, decreases in births, and skyrocketing temporary worker costs are serious challenges,” the statement said. “Ignoring them doesn't make the challenges go away.”

Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, celebrated OHS’s decision at a press conference Wednesday.

“The hospital was trying to close labor and delivery for $3 million of revenue,” said State Comptroller Sean Scanlon. “And I think what the decision clearly rendered was that we did not think as a state that it was a good trade, for $3 million for profit, to jeopardize the health and safety of the women and children of this area.”

“Profits are not a problem for Nuvance,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

Despite healthcare staffing shortages across the state, Nuvance said it would train its emergency room employees to prepare them to handle emergency births.

Lydia Kruge Moore, who runs a non-profit dedicated to stopping the ward’s closure, Save Sharon Hospital, did not have an emergency delivery, but her labor moved quickly enough that she would not have been able to get to the next-closest hospital, which is a forty-minute drive away.

“My contractions were 30 minutes apart, so my doctor said, ‘Just come in, we'll evaluate you,’” Moore said. “My water broke in the car on the way there. And then I delivered my daughter 40 minutes after I arrived at the hospital. [If I wasn’t going to Sharon Hospital] my husband would have had to deliver me on the side of the road.”

Kruge Moore also questioned whether any amount of extra training could equal the years of residency that labor and delivery practitioners go through.

Dr. Edward Kavle, a pediatrician who cares for babies in Sharon’s pediatric intensive care unit, told Connecticut Public last month that research shows that any commute over 25 minutes to get to a hospital is “incredibly dangerous for babies.”

Nuvance Health has until Sept. 18 to appeal OHS’s decision.

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SHARON — There are more cows, cornfields and grain silos than shopping centers and apartment buildings in this northwest corner of the state, but that doesn’t mean women in labor should have to drive an hour to deliver their babies, state and federal lawmakers said Wednesday.

“To have women seek care locally but at the point where it is time to deliver have to go outside to a brand new team with people they don’t know … (who) are just relying on medical charts is just not fair to the people in this community,” said U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., standing with a coalition of legislators and community supporters here to celebrate a draft decision by a state agency to deny a request by Nuvance Health to close the labor ward of Sharon Hospital. “It is not how we should be delivering health care.”

Nuvance, the health system that manages Danbury, Norwalk and five other hospitals in Connecticut and New York, said the draft denial by the state Office of Health Strategy that would bar Nuvance from closing Sharon Hospital’s labor and delivery ward was “deeply disappointing” and “very concerning.”

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“It ignores the fact that (Sharon) Hospital faces serious financial hardships and a very under-utilized maternity unit with declining births and considerable operational costs,” said Andrea Rynn, Nuvance’s assistant vice president, community, government and public relations.

Nuvance stopped short of saying whether it would appeal the decision by the Sept. 18 deadline, except to say, “We will be considering all options available as we reassess our path forward.”

At stake is the fate of a rural hospital near the borders of New York and Massachusetts with one of the only three 5-star safety ratings in Connecticut. Movie stars Liam Neeson and Meryl Streep made video appeals during the height of the coronavirus crisis in 2020 to help raise money for the hospital.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal was among the state and federal leaders assembled at Sharon Town Hall Wednesday to call on Nuvance to “do the right thing” and accept the state decision to keep the labor and delivery ward open.

“Work with us, not against us. Make the right decision. Don’t appeal,” Blumenthal said during a mid-morning press conference. “To appeal … would be a travesty and a tragedy for you as a health care institution.”

Nuvance responded that over the last decade, Sharon Hospital has averaged fewer than one delivery per day and at times has gone multiple days without a birth in a fully-staffed ward.

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In December, Nuvance’s top executive told the state Office of Health Strategy during a public hearing that Sharon Hospital was in “serious financial distress,” losing more than $20 million total in 2020 and 2021. And in one month alone — October 2022 — Sharon had lost $1.9 million.

“Since 2019, the losses have been more than $50 million. It’s about $450,000 (in loses) a week,” said John Murphy, president CEO of Nuvance. “The bottom line is that the current model of providing care and the services that we provide and the manner in which they are provided is simply not sustainable.”

The Connecticut Hospital Association said in a statement on Wednesday that the state should not turn a "blind eye to the issues that threaten hospitals' ability to sustain exceptional care and slow the rate of cost growth."

“It’s concerning that OHS’s proposed final decision disregards declining births, recruitment challenges, and financial pressures that pose significant challenges to maintaining birthing services," the association said. "Closing a birthing unit is not a decision that is made lightly. Hospitals want nothing more than to provide access to the highest quality care to every patient in every situation. But staffing shortages, decreases in births, and skyrocketing temporary worker costs are serious challenges. Ignoring them doesn't make the challenges go away and it moves Connecticut further away from our goal to make healthcare more affordable."

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The state disagreed in a 39-page “proposed final decision” on Monday.

“Despite Sharon Hospital’s losses in 2021, Nuvance made approximately $75 million, had an excess of revenue over expenses of $105 million, had an increase in net assets of $242 million ending the year with over $1.7 billion in net assets, and by all accounts appears financially stable,” the finding reads. “Moreover (Nuvance) … does not anticipate any financial losses resulting from the termination of the (labor and delivery) services. In fact, (Nuvance) anticipates a financial gain of approximately $3 million per year.”

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon called that a bad trade for Connecticut.

“What this boils down to is (Nuvance) was trying to close labor and delivery for $3 million in revenue,” Scanlon said during Wednesday’s press conference. “We do not think as a state that is a good trade — $3 million more profit to jeopardize the health and safety of the women and children of this area.”

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Blumenthal agreed.

“Nuvance makes a lot of money. Profits are not a problem for Nuvance. Obviously, what they are trying to do here is squeeze more profits out of Sharon Hospital by trying to profiteer on the backs of pregnant women,” Blumenthal said. “To say women can travel 30-to-60 minutes ain’t gonna cut it. Nuvance knows healthcare…and Nuvance knows forcing travel is wrong to do.”

SHARON — Celebrity residents like Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick may add sparkle, but the heart of the Litchfield County town of Sharon is its hospital, residents say.

“We’re a hospital town — everything’s interconnected,” said Brent Colley, outgoing first selectman of Sharon. Colley’s wife works at a medical office linked to Sharon Hospital and his two kids were born there. His wife has also been treated for cancer there twice.

Sharon Hospital is also the town’s largest employer and draws visitors from throughout the region to the upscale shops and cafes that dot Sharon’s main streets.

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And now that the hospital’s owner has attempted to cut back on key services like its birthing center and intensive care unit, townspeople are worried.

“It’s a scary time for everyone,” Colley said. He compared the impact of the hospital’s downsizing to the slow decline of the Gilbert & Bennett wire factory in his Fairfield County hometown, Redding.

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“We really suffered when we lost the heart that provided so much to the community, so it could be a similar situation like that,” Colley said.

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In the latest chapter in Sharon Hospital’s downsizing, owner Nuvance Health of Danbury is appealing a decision by the state to reject its bid to close the birthing center.

Nuvance is losing $3 million a year staffing the labor and delivery unit at Sharon Hospital due to staffing difficulties and declines in demand, an attorney for the health system told officials from the state’s Office of Health Strategy at a Nov. 8 hearing.

Amid the stats illustrating Nuvance’s losses from Sharon Hospital was a clear message: Keeping the birth center open could endanger the survival of the entire institution.

“This decision threatens Sharon Hospital’s ability to continue delivering care in northwestern Connecticut,” Nuvance attorney Ted Tucci said.

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The state will issue a decision on Nuvance’s appeal within 90 days of the Nov. 8 hearing, an OHS representative said.

Deep roots in town

Walk past the columns into Sharon’s 1875-vintage town hall and you’ll see a framed photo right outside the first selectman’s office: The “new hospital” built on site of the current one on Hospital Hill Road in 1916. That building took the place of the town’s first hospital, founded by Dr. Jerome Chaffee in 1909.

When Colley started his first of five terms as Sharon First selectman in 2013, Sharon Hospital was owned by for-profit Essent Healthcare of Connecticut and making $2 million a year in profit. But a shift in tax structure and a steady decline in patient volume began taking its toll.

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By the time New York-based nonprofit system Health Quest bought the hospital in 2017 it was reporting annual losses of $2.5 million. Citing those deepening losses, Health Quest proposed closing the birth center in 2018 sparking a community outcry, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Health Quest merged with Western Connecticut Health Network in 2019 as part of a $2.4 billion deal to form Nuvance Health, an alliance that brought Sharon into a network with Danbury, Norwalk and New Milford hospitals, along with New York’s Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie and Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel.

Sharon now has 78 available beds and operating losses that ballooned to $23 million in fiscal 2022. Nuvance formally petitioned the state to close the birthing unit in January of 2022, citing its financial woes along with declining births and the aging demographic in the area.

But town and state officials pushed back, citing the popularity of the hospital in communities in neighboring New York towns with a younger and more diverse demographic.

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Connecticut’s northwest corner — and Sharon Hospital’s service area — extends across borders due to the area’s rural and remote landscape, Colley said. In addition, the pandemic has brought new younger families to the area who prefer not to drive more than 30 minutes on hilly roads for maternity services, he said.

Most of all, the birthing center represents a continuity of care for local residents, Colley said.

“The doctors that we have here are great, not only are they delivering babies, but they’re helping the women throughout their life,” he said. “We’re just kind of pleading with them to reconsider this,” he said of Nuvance’s bid to close the unit.

'Corporate medicine’ comes to town

With its faded children’s artwork on the walls, family photos and copies of Yankee Magazine piled up in the waiting room, Dr. David Kurish’s office across the street from Sharon Hospital could be a set from a nostalgic TV show like “Leave it to Beaver.”

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But Kurish acknowledges that the old-school medicine he has practiced in Sharon for decades may be a thing of the past.

“It used to be 36 hospitals in Connecticut 40 years ago, now it’s (four) big chains. And it’s such a shame because it’s denying care to people in more remote areas,” Kurish said.

Nuvance’s fight to close the maternity unit at Sharon Hospital has already impacted the town’s medical community, which is down to one obstetrician-gynecologist from three several years ago, Kurish said.

“Unfortunately, the hospital is litigating this and delaying it, and it just makes it more difficult for women,” Kurish said.

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Even as Kurish fights to keep Sharon Hospital central to town life, Nuvance seemed to push back at that vision of health care at the Nov. 8 hearing.

“We don’t live in a ‘Leave It to Beaver’ world,” Nuvance attorney Tucci told the OHS at the Nov. 8 hearing. “The days of small community hospitals being what they once were are simply over.”

Patients across Connecticut in both big cities and small towns will increasingly encounter what he terms “corporate medicine,” Kurish said, with consolidation and profit-based decisions that impact both cost and convenience.

“To me a hospital doesn’t have to be a profit-making venture — it shouldn’t be. It’s supposed to serve the community,” Kurish said.

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The Connecticut Office of Health Strategy has denied Nuvance Health’s application to terminate labor and delivery services at Sharon Hospital, according to a final decision published Monday.

“It is definitely a day to be celebrated for this community and for our patients and for safety and quality of life,” said Howard Mortman, an OB-GYN who has been delivering babies at Sharon Hospital for over 30 years. “This place would have become a very dangerous area for pregnant women, and it would have been really hard for young families to even think about living in this area.”

The final decision stated that, among other points, Nuvance failed to prove that the proposal would improve quality, accessibility and cost effectiveness of health care delivery in the region.

Nuvance Health spokesperson Andrea Rynn said the health system is “reassessing” its path forward in light of the state’s decision.

“As a small community hospital within a non-profit health system, Sharon Hospital faces substantial financial and operational challenges to its continued operation of a Labor & Delivery unit. Years of low volume, coupled with increasing difficulty finding physicians and nurses to staff the unit, has made the situation tenuous,” Rynn wrote in emailed comments.

Nuvance filed for permission to close the labor and delivery unit in January 2022, citing low birth volume, the area’s aging population and staffing challenges. The hospital said that keeping the unit open had a negative financial impact and prevented the expansion of services that the community needed most.

According to OHS spokesperson Tina Kumar Hyde, Sharon Hospital can file a petition for reconsideration with the agency within 15 days or appeal directly to the Superior Court of Connecticut within 45 days.

The decision involves the second of three applications OHS received since 2020 to close labor and delivery units in rural areas of the state. In addition to Sharon Hospital, Windham Hospital and Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford also applied to shutter birthing services.

While the state denied the closure of labor and delivery at Sharon Hospital, it made the opposite decision in the case of Windham Hospital.

In December, after a three-year saga that pitted local activists against one of Connecticut’s biggest health systems, the state approved Hartford HealthCare’s proposal to close birthing services at Windham Hospital. Windham Hospital stopped performing births in June 2020 and applied for permission to close the unit three months later.

“CON applications are decided on a case-by-case basis and do not lend themselves to general applicability due to the uniqueness of the facts in each case,” said Kumar Hyde when asked what the agency is looking for. “Not all proposed terminations of labor and delivery are the same, so each proposal will be considered on its merits.”

Under the terms of the settlement with the state, Windham Hospital must hire an independent third party to assess the need for and feasibility of establishing a birthing center in the area. If the study concludes that it is necessary and possible to do so, the hospital will have to either find a provider to operate a birthing center or operate it themselves.

The hospital will also be required to provide both emergency and non-emergency transportation for the birthing parent, as well as any support people, to and from the hospital for pre-delivery exams, labor and delivery, and post-delivery visits. Windham Hospital will continue to provide prenatal and postpartum care.

Trinity Health of New England applied to close the labor and delivery unit at Johnson Memorial Hospital in September 2022. OHS issued a proposed final decision denying the closure last month.

The state process now gives Trinity Health of New England 21 days to appeal and request an oral argument. At that point, the application would appear before the executive director or deputy director of OHS, who then would have the final say to uphold, reverse or modify the decision within 90 days of oral arguments.

Katy Golvala is a member of our three-person investigative team. Originally from New Jersey, Katy earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Mathematics from Williams College and received a master’s degree in Business and Economic Journalism from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in August 2021. Her work experience includes roles as a Business Analyst at A.T. Kearney, a Reporter and Researcher at Investment Wires, and a Reporter at Inframation, covering infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Shelton resident Sharon Herman tells Patch why she should be elected to the Board of Education.

RJ Scofield, Patch Staff

SHELTON, CT — The 2023 municipal election is heating up in Shelton and there are plenty of local races with candidates eager to serve in elected office.

Shelton-Derby Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles as Election Day draws near.

Republican Sharon Herman, 53, is a Shelton resident running for the Board of Education.

Education

Find out what's happening in Shelton-Derbywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

BA, Iona University (formerly Iona College).

What is your occupation?

Direct Sales Consultant.

Do you have a family? If so, please tell us about them.

Mom of 16 year-old daughter.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No.

Have you ever held a public office, whether appointive or elective?

No.

Now we'd like to ask a few questions about your reasons for running and your general views on politics and government. First, why are you seeking this office?

So that I can help provide the best possible education for Shelton students.

Please complete this statement: The single most pressing issue facing my constituents is ___, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Rising healthcare costs. I will work to ensure our budget is allocated efficiently and that healthcare and special needs are accommodated satisfactorily and cost effectively.

What are the major differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

My experience is vast and diversified. I am very engaged on a communal and personal level. I purchased a home in Shelton in 1998 to start a family. My daughter has been in Shelton Public Schools from kindergarten to high school and I have learned and experienced a great deal throughout these years.

If you are challenging an incumbent, in what way has the current officeholder failed the community?

N/A

What other issues do you intend to address during your campaign?

Allocating funds properly and wisely.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I have been very involved with issues concerning children, parents and families; have studied abroad and have had the opportunity to work with think tanks in DC.

What is the best advice anyone ever gave you?

Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Is there anything else you would like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I am a strong, passionate, objective and sincere team player.

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