New health center plan may not get a warm welcome

WINSTED — If initial plans to build a new health center in Barkhamsted come to fruition, there may be significant opposition from community members, who will lose an emergency room and other services currently being offered at the Winsted Health Center on Spencer Street.

So says Community Lawyer Charlene LaVoie, who represented the Winsted Health Center Foundation for several years. LaVoie said she and many of her former colleagues on the board are against Charlotte Hungerford Hospital’s plan to pull its services out of the Winsted Health Center and move them to a property just east of the Winsted-Barkhamsted line, near the Route 44 Cinerom Complex.

“The Winsted Health Center is a big brick in the wall that makes up this community,� LaVoie said. “That’s the whole point of the center from the beginning, to have locally controlled health care.�

LaVoie said she hopes to see emergency services retained at the Spencer Street facility, which was previously the home of Winsted Memorial Hospital and Litchfield County Hospital before that. Medical services have been provided on the hill for more than a century.  

“If it’s not going to be Charlotte Hungerford Hospital providing emergency services, it’s going to be someone else,� LaVoie said. “If they’re going to try to eliminate emergency care in Winsted, this town ought to protest as loudly as it did in 1996 when we collected 12,000 signatures in 12 days.�

LaVoie has been working as the community lawyer since the early 1990s and was heavily involved in negotiations that resulted in the founding of the Winsted Health Center after the demise of Winsted Memorial Hospital. With her position funded by the Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest, she represented the Winsted Health Center Foundation, which continues to manage the property. The community-based board of directors is one of only two like it in the country.

Though LaVoie has not represented the foundation for the past several years, she said members will undoubtedly come forward in the future if it appears plans are moving forward for the new health center in Barkhamsted.

“If the foundation lets this happen, it is not representing Winsted and the surrounding towns,� she said.

LaVoie said she expects opposition to the new center to grow.

“It will be a concerted effort,� she said. “Charlotte Hungerford wants a better facility and I don’t blame them. But the better facility ought to be on Spencer Street. It is the center for health care in this greater service area. Thousands of lives have been saved at that emergency room.�