BOSTON (State House Intelligence Service) – Steward Health Care announced late Wednesday night that it has again postponed the hearing on the sale of its Massachusetts hospitals, this time until next Thursday.
“The sale hearing for the debtor hospitals in Arkansas, Louisiana and Massachusetts, originally scheduled for August 16, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. (Central Time), is hereby adjourned to August 22, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. (Central Time),” the company said in a late-night filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Read more: Local Girl Scouts set up beach cleanup stations in Nahant, Massachusetts.
Steward has said it has offers for five hospitals on six campuses in Massachusetts, but has not yet disclosed the identities of the interested parties or the details of the offers on the table. The latest in a series of delays came the same week that the bankrupt company announced it had “entered into a definitive agreement” to sell its physician network to a Tennessee-based affiliate of a New York private equity firm for $245 million in cash. The deal still must be approved by the court at a hearing this Friday at 10 a.m. CT, the filing said.
The company has already received court approval to close Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, but company officials told the court that they had “received binding offers from local operators to acquire six (6) of their hospitals in Massachusetts, including Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Saint Anne’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital – Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital – Methuen and Morton Hospital.”
The Massachusetts state government has reached an agreement with Steward to provide $30 million in upfront Medicaid payments to keep hospitals here afloat through August. But officials did not answer questions this week about whether any payments have been made or will be made under that agreement. The agreement required Steward to sign “agreements to acquire the hospital operations and property” of the Massachusetts hospitals by Aug. 9, and for the bankruptcy court to approve the sale by Aug. 15.
Instead, the Ministry of Health expressed its disappointment on Monday that no purchase agreements had been signed for the remaining five hospitals up for sale at that time.
Also on Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an objection to Steward’s original plan to seek court approval for the sale of Stewardship Health and a number of its hospitals in three states at Friday’s now-postponed hearing.
The federal government “objects to any proposed sales to the extent that such sales seek to transfer the debtors’ Medicare Part A contract agreements in violation of applicable federal law,” the filing said. The Justice Department said it filed the objection and reservation of its rights in part because Steward has not yet disclosed the identities of the companies bidding on hospitals it intends to sell.
“Pursuant to the Bid Procedures Order … the Debtors were required to disclose the results of the auctions, including the successful bidders and the material terms of the proposed sales, on August 7, 2024. As of this filing, the Debtors have not disclosed the successful bidders for the proposed sales, nor have they filed proposed orders or asset purchase agreements specifying the terms of those proposed sales pursuant to the Bid Procedures Order,” the DOJ wrote.
The court-approved procedures that Steward must follow during its bankruptcy sale proceedings provide that “sale hearings may be adjourned or rescheduled by order of the bankruptcy court or the debtors after consultation with the consulting parties, but without further notice to creditors and interested parties other than notice of the adjourned date at the sale hearing(s) by the debtors.”
Written by Colin A. Young/SHNS
