Quincy emergency healthcare termination poses other grave implications for locals

– Quincy News from Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

The future of emergency healthcare in Quincy<br/.>A Dreamstime stock image

Quincy emergency healthcare termination poses other grave implications for locals.

Last week’s breaking badly for Quincy locals news was rolled out on the Friday holiday on the front end of this year’s Fourth of July holiday weekend in the time honored practice of trying to bury bad news over an all but invariably quiet news cycle whenever possible.

The bad news: the emergency healthcare services still provided at the site of the long-shuttered Quincy Medical Center will going the way of the hospital in November when its lease is terminated.

In turn, Quincy will soon be the largest city in the Commonwealth without local emergency healthcare services.

As obviously troubling is the impending end of local emergency healthcare services, arguably more problematic implications are also on the horizon.

Will you be mad? “Well that’s too bad.”
An O’Mahoney/Patriot Ledger image

For example, while Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch has noted that urgent care and similar medical care facilities have opened in in Quincy recently, the reality is that urgent care providers are more akin to a walk-in clinic for mostly minor matters for those who are not able to readily access their regular healthcare provider. 

For but a couple of typical examples, a flu shot or required back to school vaccinations.

Additionally, these operations typically do not operate 24/7 nor have a medical doctor on site.

The needle and the damage done
A file photo

And as for other spin foisted by the Koch Machine, it has long and often noted that the local emergency services facility has experienced a tremendous drop in patient counts following the closing of Quincy Medical Center as well as added that a considerable share of the remaining patients in recent years has entailed treating those who have overdosed on an opiate.

The problem with this line of bovine byproduct is the undeniable fact that quick access to emergency health care saves lives.

That and how in a civil society even drug addicts lives should matter.

The pandemic continues
A Getty Images graphic

There is also the matter of having sufficient available emergency care capacity to be able to respond to the needs of both unexpected tragic major events in general and now given the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in particular.

To this point, Mayor Koch recently noted that it has always been his understanding that the agreement was that Steward Health Care’s emergency care facility’s lease at the site of the former Quincy Medical Center was supposed to be up in December 2020 with the option of five-year extension. 

Now, however, landlord and developer FoxRock will instead showing Steward the door come November. 

Let me tell you yet anoither story …
A Koch campaign flyer image

“As part of the $12 million deal in 2016 between the city, Steward Health Care and FoxRock Properties, the developer was supposed to execute 150,000 square feet in leases to medical providers for at least seven years, or pay the city $4.2 million, so that the city does not get back its right of reverter, and its interest in the property.

Three Card Monte anyone?

And adding to the verbal prestidigitation, Koch has turned the table on Steward Heath Care: “I’m disturbed they’re trying to claim the moral high ground … by saying ‘(p)oor us, we’re being forced out.’”

Left unmentioned, however, is that the proposed construction of a larger medical offices building in Quincy Center by FoxRock that the Koch Maladministration has long touted as trade-off of a sort for the loss of the long-shuttered Quincy Medical Center and to help grease the jamming of almost 500 high-end for Quincy apartments onto the former hospital site now looks to not be happening.

Business as usual – the real Quincy Way …
A Quincy Quarry meme

To Mayor Koch’s thus rebuttable statements, one can only assume business as usual in the Q per a nuanced read of the South Shore broadsheet’s coverage of the announced closing of the emergency care facility as well as given the long sordid history of real estate dealings by the City of Quincy.

For example, Mayor Koch added that it is unclear if the developer will have to pay (the aforementioned $4.2 million penalty payment, ed.) because it appears the market cannot support the at least 150,000 square foot in leases for health care operations required per the agreement.

Not happening?
A FoxRock architectural rendering

In turn, such can only be viewed as tap dancing around the likelihood that the long pimped by the mayor proposed new medical offices building will not be built anytime soon, if ever, much less in time to comport with the terms FoxRock undertook care of the triparty purchase agreement it freely entered into when it agreed to buy the hospital almost four years..

The cancellation of the plans for the touted medical offices building in turn poses further potential dire consequences.

One is that the proposed medical office building was to first new large commercial office building built in the Quincy Center redevelopment district, if not also the largest building built within the often delayed – if not also foundering – plans of Mayor Koch for “A New Quincy Center.”

Do the clogged Quincy Center redevelopment plans need some Ex-Lax?
An iconic Quincy Quarry exclusive image

The medical offices building was hoped to yet again try to jump start the level of far more considerable development needed in Quincy Center to cover the nut for the so far roughly $190 million Mayor Koch has spent within the Quincy Center redevelopment district in the hope that sufficient development would happen to cover the nut on municipal debt incurred to fund the 190 large.

However, Quincy Quarry’s real estate development desk, along with an assistant from the Quarry’s municipal affairs desk, viewed last year’s presentation by the Koch Machine to the City Council on the koched-up plans for redevelopment of Quincy Center plans as indicating that it appeared the annual tax revenue the then hoped for from new development would often fall short of covering the annual nut from roughly 2028 until the admitted projected breakeven date in 2060.

A disgruntled taxpayer
A file photo

In turn, any shortfall in new development revenue within the special Quincy Center redevelopment tax district, all local taxpayers are obligated to cover the shortfall.

And now given the COVID-19 pandemic, it is only reasonable to expect all manner of further delays hitting the fan for the already long foundering pipe dreams of a mayor with no actually successful real estate development experience.

Factor in burgeoning city employee healthcare budget annual outlays, ever growing at several times faster then the rate of inflation make-up payments for the woefully underfunded city employee pension obligations, and all manner of other structural deficit problems with City of Quincy’s annual budgets at least worsened by the Koch Maladministration, local taxpayers can expect to both be assuming the position to have their “pockets” picked on top of likely not being able to receive rapid emergency care after they open their property tax bills in coming decades.

QQ disclaimer