Gov. Maura Healey and Brown University Health CEO John Fernandez in November unfurled the banner outside St. Anne's Hospital. The old sign reading "Steward Family Hospital" was covered by a spiffy new BrownHealth logo. The ceremony marked the $175 million handoff of St. Anne's and Morton Hospital in nearby Taunton to Rhode Island's largest health care system. It was also a good-riddance celebration of Steward Health Care's ignominious departure from Massachusetts that capped the Healey administration's campaign to put six of the bankrupt company's acute care hospitals in the hands of new operators. And maybe most important, it heralded the arrival of a potentially powerful new player to the state's hospital sector, one that is financially stable at a time when others are struggling, and one that brings the culture of high-level academic medicine to a part of the state away from Boston's world-famous medical hub. To the 1,600 employees at St. Anne's and 1,150 at Morton, Fernandez promised to "focus on GSD — get stuff done."
Executives at the overextended hospital chain have treated their in-house malpractice insurer, TRACO, like a piggy bank, pulling cash from it at will, and severely depleting the assets meant to cover claims of medical harm. Indeed, Steward was so eager to spend TRACO's money that it moved the insurer from the Cayman Islands — a traditionally permissive locale for foreign investors — to Panama, where certain key regulations were even more lax. Auditors had been pushing Steward to shore up TRACO's balance sheet. But executives had other plans for the insurer's assets and believed Panama would allow them more freedom to spend, according to three Steward insiders and internal company emails.
Federal agents briefly detained former Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre early last week, served him with a search warrant, and seized his phone — the latest sign that a federal corruption probe is focused on the healthcare chain's embattled founder, according to three people briefed on the matter. Another Steward executive, Armin Ernst, a Brookline resident who leads Steward's international entity, was also recently visited by federal investigators and had his cellphone seized, two of the people briefed told the Globe. The searches come on the heels of a Globe Spotlight Team report that revealed several Steward board members had been summoned to answer questions as part of a sprawling grand jury probe into alleged fraud, bribery, and corruption within the now-bankrupt, Boston-born healthcare chain.
AdventHealth has signed a definitive agreement to purchase ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte and certain assets of ShorePoint Health Punta Gorda from affiliates of Community Health Systems, Inc. The transaction also includes related businesses, including physician clinic operations, outpatient services and ShorePoint Health Emergency Department in Cape Coral. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
METHUEN — Strolling into the cardiac unit at Holy Family Hospital, the top executive of Holy Family's new owner, Lawrence General Hospital, stood erect and listened intently as nurses in scrubs ran through their wish lists: more staff, more supplies, fresh paint — "a little lipstick," in the words of one nurse — to brighten up the floor. Dr. Abha Agrawal assured the overburdened staff that she'd begun hiring and restocking supply cabinets in the post-Steward Health Care era. She said she'd directed her maintenance staff to replace damaged shades in the windows of rooms so patients can sleep, a complaint she'd heard on a previous visit to her expanded domain. She also had a question for the nurses, and a lesson to impart. She asked them who their boss was — and promptly answered her own question. "The patient is the boss," she said. "I say that everywhere I go."
Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon, a specialist in the chest including the heart, lung and esophagus. He has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a doctorate in medicine and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School. He has worked at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center — now the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. There, he was appointed director of the Cardiovascular Institute and participated in the first completely endoscopic, robotic open-heart operation and first robotic coronary artery bypass operation in the United States. He also co-founded and directed a Complementary Care Center there with alternative therapies such as energy healing, hypnosis and massage, according to reporting from the second half of the 1990s. He rose through the ranks at Columbia University, where he became a vice-chair and professor of surgery. The university has removed almost all content about Oz from its website since 2022.