Mission Health has permanently closed Asheville Specialty Hospital, the only long-term acute care hospital in western North Carolina, less than two months after suspending its services following Tropical Storm Helene. The 34-bed Asheville Specialty included a comprehensive stroke center, dialysis services, physical and speech therapy, and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation, among other services, according to Mission's website. The next closest long-term acute facility, or LTACH, is in Greenville, South Carolina, a little more than 60 miles away. The facility was one of three services that Mission Health temporarily shut down after Helene crippled western North Carolina and left Asheville, and Mission Hospital, without water. CarePartners and Solace hospice care also closed and more than 250 employees had to take temporary positions as patients were ported out to facilities in the region and out of state.
Negotiations between Steward Health and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania continue in the sale of Sharon Regional Medical Center. According to a court filing made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Steward Health is requesting funding of $3 million per month from the Commonwealth by Monday, Dec. 2 or they will begin the hospital closure process. However, a filing later Monday extended that deadline to Wednesday, Dec. 4. The Commonwealth committed to pay Sharon Hospital $1.5 million per month for three months ($4.5 million) in September to maintain operations including payroll, rent, supplies and accrued expenses. Steward Health threatened to close the hospital if it did not receive this funding.
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.