Senator Elizabeth Warren criticizes Steward Health CEO Ralph De La Torre
During a visit to Fall River, Senator Elizabeth Warren said Steward Health CEO Ralph De La Torre “should be replaced” and called his leadership style “outrageous.”
On Thursday, lawmakers indicated they plan to file contempt of court proceedings against the CEO of Steward Health Care after the hospital executive failed to comply with a subpoena by failing to appear before a bipartisan Senate committee.
Two members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions called for contempt of court proceedings against Dr. Ralph de la Torre, CEO of Steward Health Care.
“A witness cannot ignore and evade a duly authorized subpoena,” said Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee.
The Senate HELP Committee is expected to vote next week on two resolutions: one on civil enforcement and another on certifying the U.S. Attorney for criminal contempt.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said the committee would not allow de la Torre to evade the subpoena.
“We’re going to continue to pursue this,” Sanders said during Thursday’s committee meeting. “This is not the last discussion of this.” In a bipartisan vote in July, a Senate committee approved the subpoena that required de la Torre to testify on Sept. 12 to discuss the bankrupt hospital chain’s financial dealings. Through an attorney, de la Torre requested last week that the hearing be postponed until after Steward’s bankruptcy case is complete.
The committee solicited input from nurses at two Massachusetts hospitals and elected officials from Louisiana to discuss the impact Steward’s hospital management had on their communities.
Ellen MacInnis, who worked as an emergency room nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston for 20 years, described how the hospital lacked supplies, equipment and staff during Steward’s 14 years of ownership.
During some shifts, St. Elizabeth’s was short of Similac, Pedialyte, or diapers. Hospital staff had to purchase these supplies at convenience stores.
When infants died in hospital, it was common practice to place their remains in a funeral box and send them to the morgue. However, Steward neglected to pay a supplier for the funeral box, so the nurses placed the babies’ remains in shipping boxes. The nurses pooled their own money to purchase funeral boxes from an Amazon supplier.
MacInnis also described how patients were dying due to staff shortages at other Steward-owned hospitals in Massachusetts. An 81-year-old died while waiting for chemotherapy in an overcrowded, understaffed hospital., For example.
In another case, a 28-year-old man experiencing a mental health crisis was restrained but not closely monitored. When the young man’s condition worsened, “no one was there to save him and he’s dead,” MacInnis said.
“All of this could have been avoided,” MacInnis added.
The hospital chain filed for bankruptcy in May and announced plans to close two hospitals in Massachusetts and sell other facilities. More than 2,200 employees in Massachusetts and Ohio will now have to be laid off, according to notices filed with state regulators.
Steward Health Care was formed in 2010 when private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management acquired a struggling nonprofit hospital chain from the Archdiocese of Boston. De la Torre, a Harvard Medical School fellow who previously headed the cardiac surgery department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, became CEO of the new company, called Steward Health Care.
Louisiana State Representative Michael Charles Echols testified about patient safety failures at a Steward-owned hospital in West Monroe, Louisiana. At a hearing before the state legislature this spring, hospital staff described searching for basic medical supplies during procedures. One patient died in the hospital while waiting to be transferred to another hospital.
Echols said de la Torre’s refusal to testify at the Senate committee hearing requires action. He wants the Senate committee to “hold him accountable, put him in jail, because that’s where he deserves to be for stealing this money from all of our communities.”
If the committee passes the criminal contempt resolution, the matter will be referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who could prosecute de la Torre for failure to comply with the subpoena.
