Healey celebrates Brown University Health's Saint Anne's Hospital takeover after Steward bankruptcy

After unveiling new signage making visible the shift to new owner Brown University Health on Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Maura Healey toured Saint Anne's Hospital and celebrated that Massachusetts did "something that no other state was able to do" as Steward Health Care collapsed.

Saint Anne's was one of eight Steward hospitals in Massachusetts whose futures were thrown into doubt earlier this year when Steward's financial problems came to light and then when the company filed for bankruptcy. The Fall River hospital is one of six former Steward hospitals that remain open under new management.

Brown University Health (formerly known as Lifespan) finalized the acquisition of Saint Anne's Hospital in Fall River and Morton Hospital in Taunton for $175 million on Oct. 1 and on Tuesday hosted the governor, Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein and others from Beacon Hill to see the facility and help rebrand it with Brown Health signage and logos.

"I'm proud that, in Massachusetts, we were able to do something that no other state was able to do. There were Steward facilities in states around the country, but only in Massachusetts were we able to do what we did, which was to save hospitals, to protect jobs and to protect the stability of a health care market and access to critically needed care. That includes 1,500 jobs right here," Healey said.

St. Anne's is considered a mid-sized community hospital with a high public payer mix and 187 staffed beds, according to the most recent hospital profile on file with the Center for Health Information and Analysis. The hospital had about 1,082 full-time equivalent employees as of 2022 and reported $323.4 million in annual revenue.

St. Anne's had 9,479 inpatient discharges in 2022 with an average length of stay of 5.1 days, according to the CHIA profile, and also fielded 45,532 emergency department visits and 157,454 outpatient visits. Just more than half of the people who left the hospital were discharged to Fall River.

The Massachusetts subsidiary of the Rhode Island-based Brown Health said when it acquired Steward hospitals that its purchases represented the next step in building "a non-profit regional healthcare organization focused on expanding access to care for all" along the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border.

Brown Health, which is Rhode Island's largest hospital system, also includes in its portfolio the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, the Miriam Hospital, Bradley Hospital, Newport Hospital, Gateway Healthcare, Lifespan Physician Group, and Coastal Medical. And the company has ties between its executive suite and Massachusetts.

President and CEO John Fernandez left his job as president of Mass Eye and Ear and president of Mass General Brigham Integrated Care to take over at Lifespan in early 2023. And Chief Financial Officer Peter Markell joined Lifespan around the same time after a career as executive vice president of administration and finance, and chief financial officer and treasurer of Mass General Brigham.

Walsh, the former head of Boston Medical Center, said she enjoyed her previous experience working with Fernandez. She said she's confident he's right for the job ahead.

"John and I had the opportunity to work together earlier in our careers, and you guys should just buckle up. He's a bundle of energy. He's a lot of ideas. He's the guy, when we were working together, the budget would be done and he'd say, 'I have an idea!' Like, 'oh no!' So this will be a very busy, thriving, exciting part of this community and I can't wait to come back down and congratulate you all again," she said.

Fernandez said Tuesday that Saint Anne's has "work to be done" but added that the physical condition of the facility was "as we thought" when bidding on it. "But the really pleasant surprise is the people were better than we thought," he added.

The Healey administration has already committed at least $417 million in public aid in part to help the new operators address infrastructure and capital needs at the former Steward hospitals. Walsh said again Tuesday that the administration "will help the acquirers."

The secretary said the good thing about Steward's bankruptcy process is that the new operators have been able to take over without being responsible for Steward's debts, but the downside is that they also have no working capital.

"So Brown has to make investments in keeping the place running until the services that they're providing right now, today, until they get paid for. So that's about probably 90 days of working capital that Brown and Brown Health is providing to keep these hospitals open, and we are enormously grateful for them stepping up," Walsh said.

The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that Brown Health had been in talks with the Fall River Diocese about maintaining the Catholic identity and name of Saint Anne's Hospital, which was founded by Dominican Sisters of the Presentation and was part of the Catholic Caritas Christi Health Care system before that was bought out by Steward. Such an agreement would likely involve keeping religious items in the hospital and following Catholic edicts governing medical treatment.

"We're in the process of working out an arrangement with the Archdiocese of Fall River," Fernandez told the Globe.

Healey ended her stop in Fall River by encouraging people in the area to seek care at Saint Anne's.

"I know there's been an uptick in utilization, people coming here, I think in part because there's a sense of, you know, now things are … the ship has been steered," she said. "So it's just to say, as we face the winter and cold and flu season and everything else, this is a place with wonderful providers who are ready to provide wonderful care."