The Healey administration and Steward Health Care have reached deals that would keep five Massachusetts hospitals open, the governor announced Friday.
The operations of Saint Anne's Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, the Holy Family Hospitals and Morton Hospital would be transitioned to new operators, according to the announcement, while the Healey administration would use eminent domain to transfer control of Saint Elizabeth's to a new owner.
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The moves, when finalized in the coming days or weeks, will effectively end Steward's presence in Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey told reporters. The company is going through bankruptcy proceedings.
"None of us wanted to be here in the first place. This is not something that Massachusetts created. It was something that was created by the greed and the exploitation by an individual, [Steward CEO] Ralph de la Torre, and his team," Healey said in a statement.
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Steward has already announced the impending closure of two other hospitals in Massachusetts: Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer. Those closures have not been impacted by the announcement.
Healey also said that Steward-owned Norwood Hospital, which remains closed after flooding caused serious damage, was "not in the mix right now," and that its future would be dealt with later on.
Under the deals announced Friday, the Holy Family hospital campuses in Haverhill and Methuen would be operated by Lawrence General Hospital, Morton and Saint Anne’s would be run by Lifespan, while both Good Samaritan and, eventually, Saint Elizabeth's, would be taken over by Boston Medical Center.
"We are grateful for their partnership and their commitment to not only maintaining the quality of care but improving the quality of care in these communities," Healey said.
To help the communities served by and staff of Carney and Nashoba Valley hospitals, the Healey administration noted it has committed $30 million to keep the facilities open and directed job re-hiring help to staff. But Healey acknowledged that the plan saving the other Steward hospitals could be painful for the Carney and Nashoba Valley communities.
"The community, patients, workers in Carney Hospital, in Nashoba Valley Medical Center, are rightly upset about these closures, and I want them to know that I am too. I am really upset about what Steward did, which is to run them to the point where … there was no hospital operator willing to come forward with a bid to continue operations," she said.
Earlier Friday, a lawyer representing Steward Health Care said in court that the company was "close" to signing purchase agreements for at least five of its six for-sale hospital campuses in Massachusetts.
"I'm pleased to report we've made very significant progress with the parties, in no small part to the efforts of the mediator," Ray Schrock, Steward’s lawyer from the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said Friday. "We're not quite there yet but we are hopeful that we could close out the remaining issues between, on the one hand the buyers, on the second between the commonwealth of Massachusetts and our stakeholders, as we move forward toward what we hope is a signing of asset purchase agreements on hopefully all of the six hospitals that we're trying to sell. But certainly at least on five, I know we're close."
Steward hopes to be "reporting a favorable result on signing the asset purchase agreements for Massachusetts on Monday," Schrock said.
Steward officials previously told the court that they received binding bids from local operators to acquire six of their Massachusetts hospitals -- Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Saint Anne’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital – Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital – Methuen, and Morton Hospital. Last week, some doubt emerged around whether the Haverhill campus of Holy Family was included in the bid for that license, raising the possibility that hospitals beyond Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center could close here.
Schrock said that the outstanding issue related to the sixth hospital was under discussion between the mortgage lender for Steward's landlord and Massachusetts state government. On Thursday, Gov. Maura Healey called out the lender, Apollo Global Management, and said she has been "very aggressive" about pushing Apollo to sign off on a deal.
"So my hope is that they come to their senses and finalize this so that we can proceed with saving these six campuses," Healey said.
