A Massachusetts hospital where a missing man escaped in October while under an emergency medical hold for mental health treatment has been rated among the worst in the state for patient safety.
Heywood Hospital, located in the city of Gardner in Worcester County, received a “D” rating from the independent health care watchdog group Leapfrog.
Of the 54 hospitals ranked in Massachusetts in the group’s fall 2025 hospital rankings published last week, four received the lowest grade — though none earned an “F.” The other hospitals rated “D” were Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester and MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham.
Heywood Hospital is where Leonard J. Mercury, a 57-year-old Westminster man, escaped from on Oct. 31. He is still missing as of Nov. 21.
Leonard John Mercury.(Courtesy Nicole La Guerre)
Mercury had been at the hospital for about two days prior to his disappearance after his wife, Nicole La Guerre, called emergency medical services for help with his diagnosed mental health condition, which flared that week.
But two days after her call, police officers again arrived at La Guerre’s home — this time, at 3 a.m. on Oct. 31. They told her Mercury broke through a window at Heywood Hospital, managed to get onto the roof and jumped off.
- Read more: Man missing since Halloween escape from Gardner hospital; family demands answers, public help
Mercury is 57, a Black man, is 6 feet tall and weighs about 195 pounds, according to the Gardner Police Department. He was last seen at around 2 a.m. on Halloween and was in hospital clothing, with no shoes.
Mercury is in need of serious medical attention and may be disoriented.
Anyone with information or who sees him is encouraged to contact the Gardner Police Department at 978-632-5600, Westminter police at 978-874-2117 or to call 911.
La Guerre also asks the public to contact the private investigator she has hired, Dana Prestone of Rockwell Investigations. She regularly updates the GoFundMe she established to pay Prestone — which has a rolling goal for the ongoing search — with information on Prestone’s investigation.
La Guerre places blame on Heywood Hospital for why her husband is missing.
“The hospital was responsible to keep him safe and protect him. They did not do that,” La Guerre told MassLive on Thursday. MassLive reached out to Heywood Hospital on multiple occasions for comment on the incident and its ranking, but did not receive response.
“Where was the guard?” La Guerre asked. “How was he able to break a window and climb up the window … run across the roof, jump down?”
“Why wasn’t he chased on foot?”
During Mercury’s stay, La Guerre said she spoke with a nurse and a psychiatrist by phone. The nurse assured her that a guard was present, as Mercury had been admitted under an emergency mental health hold.
Leonard John Mercury, 57.(Courtesy of Nicole La Guerre)
Leapfrog’s “D” rating for Heywood Hospital stemmed from several factors, displayed in a color-coded system that showed the hospital in the “red” on multiple measures. These included higher-than-average rates of patient deaths from treatable complications, falls resulting in broken hips and failures in basic safety practices such as proper handwashing and safe medication administration.
Heywood Healthcare CEO Roz Penney defended the hospital to The Gardner News in an article published Thursday. Penney said the low rating wasn’t an accurate representation of Heywood Hospital’s quality of care but instead, reflected the hospital’s refusal to participate in the survey.
“The survey requires significant staff time and resources,” Penney told The Gardner News. “Given the operational demands during the survey period, we made the strategic decision to allocate our limited resources to internal quality efforts that directly support patient care rather than to completing a labor-intensive survey.”
The highest score Heywood has received from Leapfrog since 2022 is a B. However, it earned a C rating in fall 2024 and spring 2025.
They have declined to report the same information each year, including details on nursing and bedside care, staff collaboration to prevent errors and leadership practices. Additionally, the sepsis rate has increased, respiratory failure rate has increased and postoperative wound dehiscence rate has increased.
Leapfrog assigns scores “to reflect the lack of information” when hospitals decline to report performance data. Its findings are based not only on self-reported data but on secondary sources, using a peer-reviewed methodology that evaluates 32 evidence-based measures of patient safety, such as handwashing, staff responsiveness, and surgical outcomes.
Statewide, 17 hospitals earned an “A,” 16 received a “B” and another 16 a “C.” One hospital was listed as “not graded.”
Meanwhile, La Guerre continues her search for Mercury.
She has continued to hand out flyers in cities and towns across the state over the weekend and into this week, visited shelters and kept posting online. She posts updates on the “FIND Leonard Mercury” Facebook page she’d made and to the GoFundMe.
Leonard John Mercury and Nicole La Guerre.(Courtesy Nicole La Guerre)
“I just want people to keep looking out for him,” La Guerre said. “We have flyers. Post the flyers, put it on social media, reach out to the PI if you see anything.”
She also encouraged volunteers to join the search she organized for Saturday, at 9 a.m. at the Stop & Shop on Grafton Street — the location chosen after the family received a tip that someone believed to be Mercury was seen there last week.
“We don’t know where he is or what condition he’s in … our family has been living in heartbreak and uncertainty,” said La Guerre.
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