Escalating her administration’s response to a possible well being care disaster, Gov. Maura Healey on Tuesday instructed Steward Health Care switch its Massachusetts hospitals to new operators “as soon as possible” and demanded long-sought monetary details about the for-profit system within the subsequent few days.
Healey penned a three-page letter to Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre, which her workplace publicized, alleging that his staff has “not been forthcoming, truthful or responsive” concerning the obvious monetary misery the hospitals are dealing with.
The governor demanded Steward present the state with details about its funds — which all hospitals by legislation are required to undergo regulators — by the shut of enterprise on Friday. She additionally known as on the system to correctly workers and provide all of its Massachusetts services, adjust to elevated on-site state monitoring, and permit another person to take over its hospitals within the Bay State.
“The time has come to move past our many months of discussions and begin executing a safe, orderly transition of your seven licensed facilities in Massachusetts to new operators as soon as possible,” Healey wrote. “This begins with your commitment to fully disclose the financial information we have requested by close of business on February 23, 2024. Your continued refusal to do so, particularly at this moment, is irresponsible and an affront to the patients, workers, and communities that the Steward hospitals serve. It also leads to a further breakdown in trust and creates a major roadblock to our ability to work together to resolve this effectively.”
A Steward consultant didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Tuesday afternoon.
Steward owns Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Holy Family Hospital in Haverhill and Methuen, Morton Hospital in Taunton, New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton — which it plans to shut — Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Norwood Hospital in Norwood — which is closed because of flood injury — St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton. (A Healey spokesperson mentioned the governor’s letter solely referenced seven licensed services as a result of Norwood is closed and Sinai is slated to shut in April.)
Steward officers introduced on Feb. 2 that they had agreed to “bridge financing” to assist stabilize the system, and so they hinted on the potential of transferring a number of hospitals to different operators. However, the extent of the issues — or the trail ahead — stays unclear.
Health care regulators have lengthy complained that Steward has did not submit required monetary data to the state. Healey mentioned the system for years has “refused to engage in the same level of basic transparency that every other system in Massachusetts offers by not releasing [its] audited financial statements.”
Steward is allegedly behind on hire to the owner that owns hospital property and faces lawsuits from a number of distributors claiming it has not made funds. Leaders of the for-profit system have mentioned a lot of their points stem from serving a better share of Medicaid and Medicare sufferers, for whom companies are sometimes reimbursed at a decrease price than sufferers with non-public insurance coverage.
Her workplace famous Tuesday that in 2017, when she was lawyer common, Healey represented the Center for Health Information and Analysis in litigation over Steward’s refusal to offer monetary data. A Suffolk Superior Court choose dominated final yr that CHIA can demand entry to Steward’s monetary statements, however the case is tied up in an attraction, in response to Healey’s workplace.
“Yet you have refused to comply with the court order and continued to delay and obfuscate,” Healey wrote to de la Torre. “During that time, there have been reports of mismanagement, unpaid vendors, legally questionable practices and exorbitant profits for your equity partners and yourself, all while your hospitals continued to struggle financially.”
“Massachusetts law requires disclosure of hospitals’ system-level audited financial statements to help us avoid precisely the situation you have created: we have no insight into your allocation of resources across operating units or states, and therefore no clear sense of the financial viability of the hospitals serving Massachusetts residents,” she added. “You have kept your hospitals’ financial condition in a black box, and you have kept us in the dark as well, defying state law and a court order in the process.”
Healey instructed de la Torre to offer the requested monetary data by the top of the day Friday. She didn’t say what steps the state would take if Steward doesn’t comply.
“Your continued refusal to do so, particularly at this moment, is irresponsible and an affront to the patients, workers, and communities that the Steward hospitals serve,” Healey wrote. “It also leads to a further breakdown in trust and creates a major roadblock to our ability to work together to resolve this effectively.”
She additionally demanded Steward present “full collaboration and compliance” because the Department of Public Health expands its monitoring actions to all Steward hospitals. The state may intervene, Healey mentioned, if Steward fails to offer sufficient staffing and provides in every facility.
“If appropriate staffing and supply levels cannot be met, we will take all actions necessary — in consultation with hospital leadership — to protect patients, including freezing admissions, closing beds, canceling procedures, and transferring patients to other hospitals,” Healey wrote.
The governor copied Attorney General Andrea Campbell and Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy on her letter to de la Torre.
Last week, House Democrats declared they’d not bail out Steward, within the course of lobbing criticism at each the corporate and likewise de la Torre himself.
“We are not in a financial position to commit to financing anything to bail these people out,” mentioned House Speaker Ron Mariano, who lives in Quincy, the place Steward closed Quincy Medical Center in 2014 because of vital monetary losses. “I’ve been so close to this because Ralph was at Quincy when Quincy closed. I’ve been dealing with Ralph for a long time and I am suspect of everything he tells me.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”