While it’s not yet clear precisely how the mess surrounding the sudden bankruptcy and pending auction of more than half-a-dozen Bay State hospitals will work out, a sale would actually be a good thing, according to the governor.
Gov. Maura Healey says the failure of the Steward Healthcare — the now-bankrupt hospital chain that operates eight Massachusetts hospitals — isn’t the result of normal economic headwinds or something uncontrollable like the pandemic, but comes about following deliberate attempts by Steward’s CEO and management teams to bleed those hospital systems dry.
“Ralph de la Torre, basically, was incredibly greedy and — along with the management team — stripped a lot of assets from those facilities and so we’re in this situation,” Healey told WCVB.
All blame aside, Healey said, the real focus needs to be on what happens next, some part of which became all the more apparent last week when Steward filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and later announced it would sell off its hospitals.
The eight Steward Hospitals currently operating in Massachusetts will go on sale at auction toward the end of June along with the nearly three dozen other hospitals the company runs in other states. Their fate has many state and local officials concerned about the future of regional healthcare and the risk to 16,000 Steward employees.
In an interview that aired Sunday, the governor said the company’s “orderly transition” out of the Bay State is actually the goal, not just a consequence of their financial mismanagement. Bankruptcy proceedings will bring much needed transparency — the company has refused state oversight for years, despite a law requiring them to share financial information — and the governor says her administration is already “engaging” with prospective hospital buyers.
“Our hope is that we can manage a transition to new ownership of these facilities,” she said. “There are a variety of entities interested — inside Massachusetts, outside Massachusetts.”
Healey said her hope would be for the hospitals to be bought by a non-profit hospital system. That would effectively return most of them to the state they were found in before Steward’s owners bought Catholic-run Caritas Christi Health Care’s six Massachusetts hospitals in a 2010 deal that then-Caritas CEO de la Torre described as beneficial to “our patients, employees and pensioners and tremendously benefits the communities.”
In the interim, Healey stressed how important it is that patients continue to use the hospitals, each of which remains open, albeit under observation by monitors from the Department of Health “for people’s safety.”
A website, and a hotline, have been rolled out for Steward patients to seek additional answers about the ongoing situation. The website is dedicated to Steward hospitals in Massachusetts. Patients can find that information at mass.gov/StewardResources or by calling the patient hotline at 617-468-2189 (for local callers) or 833-305-2070 (toll-free).
Steward facilities include Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Holyoke Hospitals in Haverhill and Methuen, Morton Hospital in Taunton, Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton. Their Norwood Hospital has been closed since 2020 due to flooding, and the company recently closed New England Sinai Hospital permanently.
