Steward Health Care’s disastrous monetary state wreaking havoc on Massachusetts hospitals and sufferers might be a key focus in a congressional listening to that U.S. Sen. Ed Markey might be chairing in April, whereas the well being system continues to obtain elevated scrutiny.
Gov. Maura Healey has demanded the Dallas-based system – the biggest non-public for-profit healthcare community within the nation – to go away the Bay State and switch its 9 hospitals to different operators. But as Steward maintains its presence, operating the gamut of Eastern Massachusetts, anger and uncertainty grows.
Steward reportedly owes $50 million in unpaid hire, in line with a press launch issued final month by its proprietor, Medical Properties Trust, Inc. The system can also be the topic of greater than a dozen lawsuits in Massachusetts filed by distributors and workers over unpaid invoices since 2022,
Markey might be main a listening to that can “investigate” the function of for-profit firms within the nation’s healthcare system on April 3 in Boston, a growth he introduced Friday throughout a go to to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.
A Steward official final month stated the system had secured a $60 million bridge mortgage to cowl the overdue hire which he stated would “help stabilize” the corporate and save a few of its Massachusetts hospitals from shuttering.
Four of Steward’s 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 — had confronted the danger of reportedly being closed.
When requested whether or not it’s sure that the hospitals will stay open, Markey stated that might be “the focus of the hearing.”
“We are going to elevate the voices of the workers and the patients,” he stated. “We are going to identify permanent systemic solutions that will have to be put in place to ensure the hospitals are not polluted for the wellbeing of private, wealthy millionaires and billionaires at the expense of patients.”
At least one Massachusetts hospital that Steward operates, New England Sinai, might be shuttering. The firm introduced in December that it’d be closing the Stoughton facility in April after shedding $22 million
The state has put in Department of Public Health employees in any respect Steward hospitals to make sure security and high quality care requirements in latest weeks.
U.S. Rep Lori Trahan slammed Steward’s lack of readability round Steward’s monetary shortcomings throughout a Congressional committee in late January, when she referred to as for extra transparency into the “disastrous” function of personal fairness within the monetary instability threatening hospitals in Massachusetts.
Markey highlighted how he believes Steward let itself fall into what he referred to as “uncontrollable debt,” triggering medical tools to be “repossessed” and medical doctors, nurses and public well being officers scrambling for affected person security.
Steward obtained $675 million in federal COVID reduction cash, Markey stated earlier than blasting firm chief government officer Ralph de la Torre’s dealing with of the cash
“They took taxpayer dollars to float on their yachts all while their hospitals, the Steward hospitals,” Markey stated, “drowned in debt without the revenues they needed in order to provide the services for the community.”
The Boston Globe has reported that de la Torre is the proprietor of a $40-million, 190-foot yacht that includes six bedrooms, a fitness center, front room and eating room, and a $15-million sport fishing boat that has hallways, bedrooms and full-sized baths.
“The corporate CEOs who run for-profit companies like Steward aren’t the hardworking health care workers, they aren’t patients on Medicaid and Medicare that Steward serves,” Markey stated. “They are greedy corporate CEOs sitting in their boardroom making money off of patients in emergency rooms.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”