Steward Health Care System has secured a “significant financial transaction” that an official says will “help stabilize” the corporate and save a few of its Massachusetts hospitals from shuttering.
“This funding will help stabilize operations, including the resumption of virtually all elective cases, and more importantly allows us to continue operations at all of our Massachusetts hospitals,” the corporate’s government vice chairman, Michael Callum, wrote in a letter to workers Friday.
“To be clear, we have no current plans to close any of our hospitals in Massachusetts,” Callum added.
Callum described the transaction as “bridge financing,” the phrases of which have been agreed upon and the primary tranche is imminent, he wrote.
Steward is the most important personal for-profit well being care community within the nation and owns 9 Bay State hospitals working the gamut of Eastern Massachusetts, from Haverhill to Taunton.
Four of these hospitals — Nashoba Valley in Ayer, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, Holy Family in Haverhill and Methuen, and Norwood, which has been closed since a devastating flood in June 2020 — confronted the danger of reportedly being closed because of Steward’s monetary state.
Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Morton Hospital in Taunton, Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River are additionally below Steward possession.
The Dallas-based system reportedly owes $50 million in unpaid hire, in accordance with a press launch issued final month by its proprietor, Medical Properties Trust, Inc. Steward can also be the topic of greater than a dozen lawsuits in Massachusetts filed by distributors and workers over unpaid invoices since 2022, a problem first dropped at gentle by the Boston Globe.
But in his letter to workers, Callum highlighted how Steward is in a complicated merger-and-acquisition course of “that would bring in a significant equity partner to our physician organization, and the Company has already received very significant bids as part of this process.”
Callum added that the bridge financing will result in the closing of the method and supply “the necessary capital for a robust national physician group and the time needed for Steward to consider transferring one or more of our hospitals to other operators.”
Medical Properties Trust mentioned in early January it had “agreed to fund a new $60 million bridge loan” in a plan that has Steward exploring “several strategic transactions, including the potential sale or re-tenanting of certain hospital operations as well as the divestiture of non-core operations.”
Steward has mentioned 70% of its sufferers are lined by Medicaid or Medicare, and it employs greater than 16,000 nurses, docs and different healthcare staff. It has cited poor reimbursement charges for Medicare and Medicaid companies as a driver behind its monetary challenges.
Developing story …
Source: www.bostonherald.com”