Healthcare workers and officials in central Massachusetts are sounding the alarm over the “ripple effects” that may arise if Steward Health Care’s planned closure of Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer goes through.

Inside Ayer Town Hall on Tuesday, officials called on Gov. Maura Healey to require Steward to follow state law that forces healthcare entities planning to shutter services to notify the Department of Public Health at least 120 days in advance.

Under the plan the bankrupt Dallas-based healthcare system rolled out last Friday, Nashoba Valley is set to close on or around Aug. 31, roughly 85 days fewer than the state’s 120-day notice.

“The closure of Nashoba Valley is going to have ripple effects,” Fitchburg Mayor Samantha Squailia said at a rally that followed a similar action Monday outside of Carney Hospital in Dorchester, the other facility Steward is set to close.

“It’s just going to continue to overwhelm hospitals until what? This has got to stop,” Squailia added. “Our state has to figure it out and the federal government has to overhaul our health care system.”

Healey told reporters on Monday there’s nothing she can do to prevent Steward from shuttering Nashoba Valley, Carney, or any other facility.

Squailia highlighted how other area hospitals have borne the brunt of for-profit healthcare companies, including Burbank Hospital in Fitchburg being “gutted until it was gone” and a maternity ward closing at UMass Memorial’s Leominster campus last fall.

Ayer Town Manager Robert Pontbriand conveyed a common message during the rally: “Closure is not a viable option.”

“This hospital is a critical public health facility that fills a key void,” Pontbriand said. “If it’s closed, we’re looking at response times increasing, in Ayer’s case from 10 to 15 minutes to over an hour. That’s not acceptable.”

Nashoba Valley and Carney did not receive qualified bids for purchase during an auction held on July 15, while Steward’s five other operational hospitals did.

Those facilities include Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Holy Family Hospitals in Haverhill and Methuen, Morton Hospital in Taunton, Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton.

Leadership at Nashoba, however, is continuing to work on securing a bid from a qualified operator to run the facility in the long term, Pontbriand said.

As Steward’s troubles became public, patients started to look elsewhere for care, with just 11 of Nashoba’s 46 beds filled on average in June, according to state data

The Healey administration has indicated it will provide Steward’s Massachusetts hospitals with $30 million in “interim” state aid — which they would have been owed eventually — to help shore up the facilities’ finances as bankruptcy proceedings continue.

A hearing on the sale of Steward’s other Massachusetts properties previously set for this Wednesday has been rescheduled to August 13, according to court filings.

Audra Sprague has been a registered nurse at Nashoba Valley for 17 years, and she said a majority of the 490 employees at the facility have been there for “decades.”

The planned closure would pose “devastating consequences for the health of our community,” forcing residents to travel “significant distances to access emergency care,” Sprague said.

“This delay can mean the difference between life and death in emergencies,” she said, “such as strokes, heart attacks, anaphylactic reactions and many other emergencies where minutes count. If this hospital is allowed to close, there will come a day when you or a loved one will desperately need an ambulance, and you will remember these words.”