This week, the public may finally learn who made a bid for Steward Health Care’s Bay State hospitals and whether other hospitals are on the line.
A hearing on the sale of the now-bankrupt healthcare company’s assets is scheduled for Tuesday in Massachusetts. Texas-based federal bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez will consider Steward’s plans to exit the hospital business at the hearing as the company tries to pay off the billions it owes to creditors.
Steward filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, and during a hearing just last week, the company’s lawyers said significant progress had been made in obtaining the final signatures for the sale of 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.
“The Debtors are pleased to announce that, as part of their intensive marketing process to sell their Massachusetts hospital operations, they have received binding offers from top-tier local operators to acquire the vast majority of their Massachusetts hospitals,” Steward’s attorney wrote in court documents.
But even though the bidding process was completed several weeks ago, it remains an open and ever-changing mystery as to which hospitals were sold to whom.
Shortly after the bid deadline expired, Governor Maura Healey announced that qualified bids had been received for all of the company’s hospitals in the state of Massachusetts, but did not provide any information on who had submitted them.
It later emerged that Carney Hospital in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer had to close instead after failing to receive so-called “qualified” offers.
Judge Lopez said Steward’s plan to close these hospitals was a matter of “business discretion” and permissible under U.S. bankruptcy law. According to Steward’s plans, these facilities could be closed as early as the end of August.
On Friday, State Senator Barry Feingold expressed concern that only the Holy Family campus in Methuen received a fair offer, while its sister campus in Haverhill remained in limbo.
“I’ve heard that Haverhill is not going to be part of the bid, which is concerning to me,” he told the State House News Service. “As far as I know, the bid will only be for Methuen and not Haverhill. I wanted a regional approach – we’re all in this together.”
The loss of this hospital would be a devastating blow to the Merrimack Valley, according to the Massachusetts Nursing Association.
“Thousands of patients will go without treatment, thousands more will face even longer wait times in the already overwhelmed emergency rooms of hospitals forced to admit these patients, and far too many will die if the government does not take action to keep these hospitals open,” the association said in a statement.
Just last week, the Commonwealth agreed to advance the first round of $30 million in “Clinical Quality Incentive Program payments, Acute Hospital Rate Add-On payments, Hospital Quality and Equity Initiative payments, and Safety Net Provider Payments” to Steward to keep the company’s hospitals afloat during the sale process, on the condition that the company actually sells its Massachusetts properties.
“The payment agreement represents the Commonwealth’s continued commitment to achieving the transfer of the six remaining plants to new operators,” Hugh McDonald told the bankruptcy judge on behalf of the state.
Michigan-based Insight told the Herald that it tried to buy all eight hospitals as a group but failed to make an offer that met Steward’s definition of a “qualified offer.”
Otherwise, it’s anyone’s guess who might be interested in entering the Bay State hospital market and which Steward hospitals will even remain open.
The Health Department has scheduled a series of hearings to address the concerns of residents affected by the proposed closure of Carney and Nashoba Valley. The first hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florian Hall in Dorchester.
According to DPH, a total of four hearings will be held – one in person and one virtually for each hospital – before Steward’s planned month-end closures. However, the hearings apparently will not prevent the company from moving forward with its plans.
“These hearings will not be judicial in nature, but rather will be public forums for the submission of comments that may be relevant to the Department’s consideration of the proposed change,” the DPH wrote in its announcement.
Late last week, Healey suggested that the federal government should investigate the bankruptcy of Steward and its CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre.
“He essentially stole millions from Steward on the backs of employees and patients, buying himself fancy yachts, mansions and now apparently luxurious trips to Versailles. I hope he gets what he deserves and that federal investigators will pursue him for his actions. Our government is working day and night to protect jobs and patients and to pick up the pieces of the situation Ralph De La Torre put us in,” Healey said in a statement.
