Heywood Hospital to close pulmonary outpatient service this month

GARDNER — Heywood Hospital has confirmed that its pulmonary outpatient service will be closing this month.

Dawn Casavant, Vice President of External Affairs for the hospital, said that she anticipates that the outpatient clinic will close mid-April. While the outpatient clinic will close, the hospital will continue to perform sleep studies and pulmonary function testing. She said that the official notice was not made public until the hospital was able to confirm that pulmonary function testing would continue.

Casavant said the decision to close the outpatient clinic was a financial one, as the clinic only had 1,700 patients in 2022

"Pulmonary was not an area we can afford to continue providing service," she said. "Consolidation (of other services) is something we are looking at."

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The pandemic hit health care providers very hard, and Casavant said that "Heywood was no exception."

Casavant said patients who were being seen at the hospital will be referred by their primary care physicians to Mass. Lung & Allergy, which has five offices in Central Mass., including one in Leominster.

This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Heywood Hospital to close pulmonary service for financial reasons