Through tours of two of the troubled Massachusetts hospitals owned by Steward Health Care, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch and others pointed to the impacts of the system’s financial distress on patients and workers and slammed the lack of financial transparency.
“They’ve gone to great lengths to avoid transparency,” Lynch said outside of the closed Norwood Hospital facility owned by Steward on Wednesday morning. “I think they’re fearful of what we might find in investigating where money went and other transactions.”
Lynch, along with elected officials and representatives from the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), toured Steward’s facilities Norwood Hospital — which has been closed due to flooding and delayed construction since 2020 — and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.
The Steward company, which owns nine hospitals in Massachusetts, has been under the spotlight since reports came to light that they were facing $50 million in unpaid rent and a slew of lawsuits alleging they had not paid staff and vendors.
Several of the hospitals are facing an uncertain future, and the company has announced it will close New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton.
The tours come days after Gov. Maura Healey released a letter telling Steward to find “new operators as soon as possible” for their Massachusetts hospitals and demanding full financial transparency from the hospital by Friday.
In response, Steward officials claimed they have cooperated with the state and handed over financial audits in late 2023 and early 2024.
Lynch said Steward’s claims regarding their audited financials are “totally fictional.”
Like several other elected officials, Lynch criticized Steward leadership and financial management, pointing to reports the CEO Ralph de la Torre bought two yachts valued over the hospital system’s $50 million rent debt.
“Steward has two missions as a for-profit,” said Lynch. “One is to generate revenue for their shareholders or private equity firm. Then, they should also try to provide high-quality health care. In this case, I believe those missions were in conflict. And I think the profit motive won out, as I see people sailing on yachts off of Ecuador, and I see the conditions of our hospitals.”
The for-profit business model itself, Lynch argued, created the problems.
If the health system does not hand over financial information by Friday, the representative said, he’ll be happy to “work as a partner” with the state and there are many directions officials could go to escalate pressure.
“We could probably issue subpoenas to get that information or to pull officials from Steward Health Care before Congress,” Lynch said. “They’re not there yet. I’m hoping that the state can handle this and get the answers we need.”
In the meantime, one representative from the MNA said the staffing levels at Good Samaritan Hospital are “atrocious,” and all kinds of resources have fallen by the wayside.
“They just stop paying the vendors,” said Kathy Reardon, a former nurse at Norwood Hospital and MNA representative, noting nurses have been short on things as simple as paper to print prescriptions on. “They pick and choose who they pay, I believe, and what equipment that they’re paying for.”
Reaching out to Steward about the issues, Reardon said, the nurses have heard “crickets.”
More impacted hospitals and health services have chimed in as the uncertain future of Steward hospital’s have impacted patients.
“As Steward Health Care faces financial uncertainty, we want to directly reassure our patients receiving care at St. Elizabeth’s and other Steward facilities that Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is committed to ensuring that they will not experience any interruption in their oncology care,” Dana-Farber President and CEO Laurie Glimcher said in a statement Wednesday. … “As we monitor this situation closely, it’s important that our patients know without a doubt that we are here for them now and always.”
