The Monadnock Community Hospital Board of Trustees announced Thursday that the Bond Wellness Center’s fitness area will not reopen and will instead continue to be used exclusively for physical therapy and rehabilitation services.
The fitness area of the Bond Wellness Center, which is about 25 percent of the building, has remained closed since March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the state of New Hampshire allowing fitness centers to reopen last June under specific guidelines.
The closure was in response to the pandemic and under the direction of CDC guidelines for hospital operations. Since March of last year, the Bond Wellness Center fitness floor and exercise studio have been used for physical therapy and rehabilitation appointments only to allow for adequate social distancing and meet the needs of hospital patients.
“We understand it will disappoint our members and the community and it’s certainly understandable that they will be disappointed,” said Mike Shea, Chair of the Monadnock Community Hospital Board of Trustees. “Nobody wants to be in the position to have to make this kind of difficult decision. But it’s something we feel was necessary.”
Conversations around if and when the Bond Wellness Center would reopen have been ongoing among the board of trustees, Shea said, and it had come to a point where “an answer was due,” he said.
“There was a long period of time it just couldn’t be considered,” Shea said. But in recent months those conversations have happened more in earnest as more questions have come from members who sought answers to what the future would hold for the facility.
“We really owed the entire community an answer,” Shea said.
Alan Edelkind of Dublin has been a member since the Wellness Center opened in 2000 and served on the member’s advisory committee for a handful of years. As the months wore on, Edelkind had resigned himself to the fact that the fitness center would not be reopening.
“It was expected,” he said. “We knew over the months this was the way it was going to go. As it went on you knew the chance of it opening became less and less.”
Edelkind said he feels that closing the gym is a disservice to the members, many of who were seniors who used the facility to stay physically active.
“They had everything that was needed for an older population. This really gives the seniors no option,” Edelkind said. “Not only was it good for them physically, but also emotionally.”
The pandemic has stressed the already limited health care resources across New Hampshire and the country, Shea said, but the primary reason behind the decision was requiring more space for the growing need for therapy services, now and into the future.
“We have a fiduciary responsibility to steward Monadnock Community Hospital’s resources to best meet emerging community healthcare needs, one of which is the increased demand for physical and medical rehabilitation programs,” Shea said.
Many different reopening scenarios were discussed, Shea said, including a hybrid model that would allow fitness center members to schedule times when the area was not being used for physical therapy and rehabilitation services and to allow for social distancing.
“But it just wasn’t really practical,” he said. Shea added they looked at a number of different venues to see if moving the fitness center offsite was an option. “None of them were adequate enough to serve our members’ needs,” Shea said.
While other fitness centers have returned to normal operations, hospital-run facilities are under more strict guidelines from the CDC, Monadnock Community Hospital President and CEO Cyndee McGuire said, which still includes the use of masks and social distancing.
A factor that played into the decision to not reopen the fitness area was the increased demand for physical therapy and rehabilitation services.
“The statistics have shown over the last eight to 10 years, we’ve had a 62 percent increase in demand for those services,” McGuire said. The change in operation, McGuire said, now allows the hospital to better meet those demands. “And right now we’re looking at expanding some of our medical rehab services.” The Bond Wellness Center also houses Monadnock Behavioral Health Services, Monadnock Orthopaedic Associates, Monadnock Family Care, the Oncology and Infusion Therapy Center, and the Physical and Medical Rehabilitation Department, and includes physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, cardiac rehab, pulmonary rehab, and diabetic rehab.
McGuire said challenges in finding staff also had to be considered.
“We have a real workforce shortage at this moment and being able to focus on our clinical services is the most important,” she said. She added that the majority of the Bond Wellness Center staff were absorbed into other positions.
Built and opened in 2000, the Wellness Center was renamed in 2006 in recognition of Edward L. Bond Jr.’s $1 million gift to Monadnock Community Hospital’s endowment fund. For more than 20 years it has been not only a fitness center for staff and members, but a place to gather and socialize. McGuire said there were between 1,300 and 1,600 members of the Bond Wellness Center.
“People are very connected to it,” McGuire said. “When you have had something around that long, people in the community are certainly passionate about it.”
And the decision did not come without considering that factor.
“Given the expanding needs and the pandemic, we needed to make a difficult decision,” McGuire said.
Laura Gingras, VP, Philanthropy and Community Relations Monadnock Community Hospital, said she understands the disappointment that comes with the announcement.
“Some folks are very upset, but there’s been a lot of support,” she said. “We do recognize the personal loss this is for our members.”
The company that managed the Bond Wellness Center, Blue Oak Wellness, was “ready and able to move forward,” McGuire said, and that the decision did not have anything to do with the management of the facility.
For members who have questions or concerns, email BWC.questions@mchmail.org or call (603) 924-1762.