Bankrupt Steward Health Care has put all of its 31 U.S. hospitals up for sale, hoping to finalize transactions by the end of the summer to address its $9 billion in total liabilities, its attorneys said at a Tuesday court hearing in Houston.

Steward, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, hopes to keep all of its hospitals open over the long term, Steward attorney Ray Schrock told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Chris Lopez, who is overseeing the Chapter 11 proceedings.

The privately-owned company closed a hospital in Massachusetts earlier this year, and officials in that state have criticized Steward’s management and its former private equity owners for making short-sighted financial decisions that undermined patients’ care. Massachusetts officials in particular criticized a series of transactions that sold off the company’s real estate and saddled it with long-term rent costs at its hospitals.

  • Rookwood@lemmy.world
    19·
    6 months ago

    I don’t see how this isn’t a fraud on the same level as Enron. There is no way that MPT was an arm’s length third party when literally everyone of Steward’s hospitals was entering into leaseback agreements with them. The system is fucking broken and it’s goddamn shameful. They are doing this with vital services which will cause communities untold suffering and has already resulted in loss of human life if you read up on their mismanagement of the hospitals.

    • Billygoat@catata.fishEnglish
      7·
      6 months ago

      Shameful is putting it lightly…

      Investors at Cerberus, meanwhile, aren’t the only ones who scored a home run by inflicting financial pain on Steward. In 2021, MPT loaned the hospital chain’s operating team, including de la Torre, $335 million to buy out Cerberus. Steward then turned around and paid its new owners, including de la Torre, a dividend of about $100 million. A few months later, de la Torre bought a $40 million yacht named the Amaral, which features a library, a gym, and a whirlpool on the top deck. Just after that, Steward filed with the government to delay paying back pandemic-era loans, citing “extreme financial hardship.”