COFAR blog

We are supporting the efforts of a number of unions and other advocates for the disabled to save the Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital from closure.

We are also pushing, at the same time, to add the state’s two remaining Intermediate Care Facilities for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ICF/IDDs) — the Wrentham Developmental Center and the Hogan Regional Center — to the list of endangered facilities that must be preserved in Massachusetts.

There appear to be a number of parallels between the Healey administration’s reported policy of restricting admissions to the Pappas Hospital, and its policy of denying most requests for placement at Wrentham and Hogan.

The administration has placed “overly restrictive admissions criteria” at Pappas, according to nurses there. It is a policy that is likely to lead to Pappas’s closure.

As we have long reported, the administration is similarly allowing the Wrentham and Hogan Centers to die by attrition by denying admissions to all but a handful of applicants in recent years.

The 60-bed Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital in Canton offers medical, rehabilitative, educational and recreational services for persons with developmental disabilities up to the age of 22. In January 2025, Governor Maura Healey did announce that she planned to close the facility in order to save money and move the hospital’s programs to the state-run Western Massachusetts Hospital in Westfield.

COFAR joined state employee unions in opposing the governor’s closure of Pappas. That opposition prodded the administration to reverse its public stance. Healey is now saying she has no plans to close the facility, but the nurses there contend the governor’s statements don’t match the administration’s actual policy.

Last month, staffers at Pappas cast a vote of no confidence in Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein in light of the Public Health Department’s alleged efforts to restrict admissions there, the Boston Herald reported.

Denials of admissions at both Pappas and the ICFs

The administration maintains the allegations of restricted admissions at Pappas are “inaccurate and (an) unhelpful escalation.” But the Herald reported that a mother’s request for admission to Pappas of a 12-year-old boy with severe disabilities had been denied. The boy is nonverbal, blind, and has other medical complications.

The Department of Developmental Services (DDS) has similarly routinely denied requests by family members to gain admission of their loved ones to Wrentham and Hogan. One of those cases involved Kristen Robinson, who is profoundly intellectually disabled, legally blind and quadriplegic, and has a seizure disorder and severe dysphagia, a medical condition that causes an inability to swallow.

DDS initially denied multiple requests by Kristen’s sisters, Kim Meehan and Karen Brady, to get Kristen admitted to the Wrentham Center. It was only through exhaustive efforts that included contacting the media, that Kim and Karen were able to get Kristen into Hogan, where she is now thriving. DDS has continued to deny Kim’s and Karen’s requests to place Kristen at Wrentham, which is much closer to where they live.

It also appears that the legal and internal appeals divisions at DDS have a bias against families and guardians seeking admission of their loved ones to Wrentham and Hogan. In at least two cases, a DDS hearing officer denied appeals by families to transfer intellectually disabled persons from corporate, provider-run group homes to Wrentham.

In both cases, the same DDS hearing officer denied the appeals in rulings that used much of the same language, and discounted concerns raised by the families about a lack of adequate care and meaningful activities in “community-based” group homes and day programs.

In both cases, the hearing officer stated that the individuals did not have a right under federal law to placement in an ICF. Also, in each appeal, DDS stated that it was restricting admissions to ICFs to cases “where there is a health or safety risk to the individual or others, and generally, when all other community-based options have been exhausted.”

COFAR is, as a result, urging state lawmakers to adopt language in the state budget, asserting the right to ICF care for all persons who have been found to be eligible for that level of care.

Rhetoric not matching policy

In the case of Pappas, the administration is insisting that there are no admissions restrictions.  The Herald quoted a spokesperson for the governor last month as saying:

Pappas continues to operate as usual, with new patients being admitted and patients being appropriately discharged when they finish their treatment. In fact, the Commissioner has been actively notifying providers of space available for new patients to be admitted at Pappas, and will continue to do so.

At a recent call-in show on Boston Public Radio, Governor Healey made a similarly reassuring statement to a COFAR advocate who asked whether the governor planned to keep the Wrentham and Hogan Centers open. Healey responded, saying, “Rest assured, there are no plans to close any facilities in Massachusetts.”

But the advocate wasn’t given the opportunity on the call-in show to ask any follow-up questions, such as why DDS routinely denies admission to the Wrentham and Hogan centers, and why there has been a steadily declining number of residents, or census, in facilities as a result.

The census at Wrentham dropped from 323 in Fiscal 2012, to 143 in Fiscal 2025 – a 56% drop. The census at Hogan dropped from 155 in Fiscal 2012, to 84 in Fiscal 2025 – a 46% drop.

We are urging all of the advocates for the preservation of Pappas to join us as well in fighting to preserve Wrentham and Hogan. Email or call your House member and urge them to support the upcoming budget amendment establishing a right to care in Wrentham and Hogan. You can find your legislator here.

Saving Pappas and saving Wrentham and Hogan are all a part of the same battle. It is a battle to stop the runaway privatization of state-run care and the race to the bottom in standards that will result from the closure of those state-run facilities.