2024 Year in Review: North Adams' Year of New Life to Old Institutions

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On March 28, 2014, the last of the 500 employees at North Adams Regional Hospital walked out the doors with little hope it would reopen. 

 

But in 2024, exactly 10 years to the day, North Adams Regional was revived through the efforts of local officials, BHS President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz, and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who was able to get the U.S. Health and Human Services to tweak regulations that had prevented NARH from gaining "rural critical access" status.

 

It was something of a miracle for North Adams and the North Berkshire region.

 

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, under the BHS umbrella, purchased the campus and affiliated systems when Northern Berkshire Healthcare declared bankruptcy and abruptly closed in 2014. NBH had been beset by falling admissions, reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and investments that had gone sour leaving it more than $30 million in debt. 

 

BMC had renovated the building and added in other services, including an emergency satellite facility, over the decade. But it took one small revision to allow the hospital — and its name — to be restored: the federal government's new definition of a connecting highway made Route 7 a "secondary road" and dropped the distance maximum between hospitals for "mountainous" roads to 15 miles. 

 

"Today the historic opportunity to enhance the health and wellness of Northern Berkshire community is here. And we've been waiting for this moment for 10 years," Rodowicz said. "It is the key to keeping in line with our strategic plan which is to increase access and support coordinated countywide system of care." 

 

The public got to tour the fully refurbished 2 North, which had been sectioned off for nearly a decade in hopes of restoring patient beds; the official critical hospital designation came in August.