The plaintiffs want a judge to order HHS to make 2017 340B regulations effective within 30 days.
The federal government is getting sued by hospital advocates for allegedly failing to impose transparency regulations and overcharge penalties on drug makers.
The American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, America's Essential Hospitals, and 340B Health filed their lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday in a federal court in Washington, DC.
The four stakeholders said they've been waiting for years for HHS to implement final regulations requiring drug companies to disclose the maximum per-unit "ceiling" price that can be charged to 340B providers for outpatient drugs.
The stakeholders are asking a federal judge to order HHS to make effective the January 2017 340B regulation within 30 days.
"As prescription drug prices continue to skyrocket, the 340B program is as crucial as ever in helping hospitals and health systems provide access to health care services for vulnerable patients and communities," AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack said in a media release.
"Our lawsuit will ensure that drug companies provide the transparency and accuracy that the government has found lacking and hold price gouging drug companies accountable," Pollack said.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs noted that Congress in 2010 gave HHS the authority to regulate and impose penalties on drug companies that fail to provide transparency on ceiling prices or overcharges.
HHS issued a final rule in January 2017 but the department, led by former Eli Lilly & Co. President Alex Azar, has delayed imposing the rule five times.
The plaintiffs say the delays are "arbitrary and capricious and an unreasonable delay in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act."
"While hospitals routinely meet rigorous requirements for accountability in the 340B program, the government has failed to hold manufacturers to the same standard," said Bruce Siegel, MD, president and CEO of America's Essential Hospitals.
"We must have a level playing field to ensure this program works as Congress intended, which is to help hospitals and other covered entities give vulnerable patients greater access to affordable drugs and health care services," Seigel said.
The plaintiffs are joined in the suit by: Rutland Regional Medical Center in Rutland, Vermont; Genesis HealthCare System in Zanesville, Ohio; and Kearny County Hospital in Lakin, Kansas.
The drug makers' lobby issued a statement Tuesday night saying that they are not to blame for the delays.
"PhRMA supports regulations on ceiling price calculations and civil monetary penalties that are in line with the 340B law and eliminate needless regulatory burdens on manufacturers."
"As we have stated in comments to HRSA on the rule, we encourage the Administration to issue any new proposals quickly and to make the 340B ceiling price database operational as soon as possible," the association said.
While UnitedHealth celebrates a win in court, CMS will have to figure out how to achieve 'actuarial equivalence' in its Medicare Advantage overpayment rule. Here are five answers you should know.
A federal judge on Friday provided a big win for the health insurance industry, ruling that a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services final rule on overpayments was fundamentally unfair.
In a 30-page rulingthat vacated the Medicare Advantage 2014 Overpayment Rule, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer sided with UnitedHealth Group and said the final rule "will inevitably fail to satisfy the statutory mandate of actuarial equivalence."
Stephanie Trunk, healthcare cractice co-leader at Arent Fox, based in Washington, D.C., explained the ramifications of the ruling in an email exchange with HealthLeaders.
1. How will this ruling change the way health insurers do business?
Trunk: The ruling essentially invalidates CMS's 2014 final rule implementing the 60-day overpayment return requirement in the Affordable Care Act. Medicare Advantage Plan sponsors—such as UnitedHealth—still must comply with the ACA requirement to report and return any overpayment "after reconciliation" within 60 days after the date on which the overpayment was identified.
2. What were the factors that led to a favorable ruling for UnitedHealth?
Trunk: The court concluded that CMS's 2014 final rule implementing the 60-day overpayment requirement violated the Administrative Procedures Act because (1) it was contrary to the statutory requirement of actuarial equivalence between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage, and (2) the intent standard associated with "identifying" an overpayment in the final rule—when it has determined or should determine through reasonable diligence—adopted in the final rule was not as proposed in the proposed rule and heightened in comparison to the statute—actual knowledge of the existence of the overpayment or acts in reckless disregard or ignorance of the overpayment.
3. How could the government respond to this ruling?
Trunk: One can only speculate. CMS can appeal or they could initiate new notice and comment rulemaking with a new proposed rule to implement the a 60-day overpayment requirement.
4. How could the federal government adjust the final rule to make it comply with statute?
Trunk: CMS needs to move away from tying overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans to diagnosis codes, which is not the basis for overpayments in traditional Medicare. In addition, CMS needs to align the definition of "identify" in the rulemaking to the statute and ensure what is included in the proposed rule is not altered in the final rule.
5. What other effects do you see this ruling having?
The basis for the case is that UnitedHealth failed to return identified overpayments as required by the ACA, as it failed to delete invalidate diagnosis codes and return the risk adjustments associated with higher value, invalid diagnosis codes. This is based on the interpretation of the ACA overpayment obligation in the 2014 final rule, which the court invalidated.
UnitedHealth and other insurers had filed suit against HHS, claiming the overpayment rule 'failed to satisfy a statutory mandate of actuarial equivalence.' A judge agreed.
A federal judge on Friday sided with UnitedHealth and other health insurers and vacated the federal government's 2014 final rule on Medicare Advantage overpayments.
In a 30-page ruling issued Friday morning, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer in Washington, DC, agreed with the health insurers that the final rule "will inevitably fail to satisfy the statutory mandate of actuarial equivalence."
The UnitedHealth-led suit was filed in 2016, and insures had argued that the 2014 statute requires "actuarial equivalence" between Centers for Medicare & Medicaid payments for care delivered under traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage.
Instead, the health insurers successfully argued, the 2014 final rule imposed a stricter standard on MA carriers than on CMS itself when paying Medicare benefits.
Collyer also denied the Department of Health and Human Services' cross motion for summary judgment, and vacated the overpayment rule.
UnitedHealth spokesman Matt Burns praised the ruling and said it "sets an important precedent and affirms the government must apply its actuarial standards equally to Medicare Advantage plans and fee-for-service Medicare.”
Drug makers launch PR campaign blaming higher drug costs on hospital markups. Hospitals call the claims 'a brazen misrepresentation of the facts.'
The ongoing spat between hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry about who's to blame for high drug prices ratcheted up this week with PhRMA mounting a public relations campaign accusing hospitals price gouging.
Nearly one in five hospitals mark up medicine prices 700% or more, according to a new analysis from The Moran Company that was paid for by PhRMA.
The study also found that 320 hospitals—8% of hospitals included in the study—marked up some medicine prices more than 1,000%.
"Hospitals receive billions of dollars every year in negotiated and mandatory discounts from biopharmaceutical companies while simultaneously increasing the price of these medicines to insurers and patients," PhRMA CEO Stephen J. Ubl said in a media release.
"In order to make medicines more affordable for patients, we must address the role hospital markups play in driving up medicine costs," he said.
The report, released Wednesday, is part of PhRMA's "Let’s Talk About Cost" public relations campaign launched this week that it says demonstrates how hospital markups lead to higher healthcare costs for patients. The ad campaign will be featured in print, radio, digital and social channels in Washington, DC, and select states.
On Thursday, the American Hospital Association fired back with a one-page rebuttal that called the PhRMA study "an obvious attempt to divert attention away from a problem of their own making: skyrocketing drug prices."
"They return once again to their standard playbook of pointing fingers and blaming everyone other than themselves to try to justify the dramatic increases in the prices of drugs, as they continue to make double-digit profit margins," said Ashley Thompson, AHA's senior vice president of public policy analysis and development.
Thompson called the latest PhRMA study "a brazen misrepresentation of the facts."
"The report conveniently fails to explain that, unlike drug manufacturers, hospitals are subject to fixed reimbursements for the vast majority of the care they provide," she said.
More than half of hospital payments are from Medicare, Medicaid, and other public payers, Thompson said, and those reimbursements are far below costs. In addition, she said, private payers negotiate prices that bundle the cost of drugs into a single, fixed reimbursement.
Thompson cited a 2015 study by NORC at the University of Chicago and paid for by the AHA and the Federation of American Hospitals found that inpatient drug spending per admission rose 39% from 2013 to 2015. The report blamed the growth in drug spending on growing drug prices.
Frustration and concern over rising costs and sketchy supplies of critical in-patient drugs has promoted seven major health systems to form their own drug company. On Thursday, the consortium representing nearly 500 hospitals rolled out Civica Rx, a not-for-profit generic drug company that could begin delivery products to hospitals as early as 2019.
The project has identified 14 hospital-administered generic drugs as its initial focus to stabilize the chronically short supply and lower costs, and could release its first products in 2019.
A consortium of health systems and foundations that earlier this year announced plans to create a not-for-profit generic drug company has given the enterprise a name and a leader.
The company will be called Civica Rx, and it will be led by CEO Martin VanTrieste, a former chief quality officer at Amgen, who will serve without compensation, according to a media release from the consortium.
"The generic drug marketplace is broken and, in response, we have created a unique and innovative fix—a public utility that is governed, exclusively, for the good of the people it serves," said Richard J. Gilfillan, MD, CEO of Livonia, Michigan-based Trinity Health, one of seven health systems invested in the project.
"Civica Rx will not earn profits for its investors, but will, instead, ensure that patients receive the greatest benefit—access to the drugs they need at affordable price points," Gilfillan said.
Civica Rx has identified 14 hospital-administered generic drugs as its initial focus, seeking to stabilize the supply of essential medications, many of which face chronic shortages. The company expects to release its first products as early as 2019.
Civica Rx is organized as a Delaware non-stock, not-for-profit corporation, and will be based in Utah.
"The formation of Civica Rx is a direct challenge to generic drug companies who have sharply and unfairly raised prices on many off-patent drugs over the last several years," said Shelley Lyford, President and CEO of the Gary and Mary West Foundation, one of three national foundations that have each committed $10 million to the project.
"We all pay a price, and lower-income patients shoulder a particularly heavy burden," Lyford said. "This intolerable situation has escalated to a public health crisis. It’s time to put patients before profits and begin the transformation of healthcare that Americans deserve. We’re confident Civica Rx provides a critical initial step with incredible potential."
With Trinity Health, the governing members of Civica Rx represent nearly 500 hospitals nationwide, and will include: Catholic Health Initiatives, HCA Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare, Mayo Clinic, Providence St. Joseph Health, and SSM Health.
The other foundations investing $10 million each in the project are The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Peterson Center on Healthcare.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will consult with Civica Rx, and more health systems are expected to join the consortium later this year.
Sixteen people, including top hospital executives, have been convicted for their roles in the long-running fraud scheme at Riverside General Hospital.
A Texas psychiatrist was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison this week for his role in a $155 million Medicare fraud scheme that ensnared top executives and clinicians at Houston's Riverside General Hospital, the Department of Justice said.
Riyaz Mazcuri, 67, a former psychiatrist at Riverside, was convicted by a federal jury in 2017 on charges that included five counts of healthcare fraud. He was also ordered to pay $20.6 million in restitution to Medicare and $2.2 million to Medicaid.
At his 2017 trial, prosecutors showed that Mazcuri and others at Riverside submitted more than $155 million in bogus claims to Medicare between 2006 and 2012, using the hospital's partial hospitalization program for patients with severe mental illness.
Prosecutors showed that Mazcuri "indiscriminately admitted and readmitted patients into these intensive psychiatric programs–often for years on end–many of whom suffered from severe Alzheimer's or dementia and were unable to participate in the treatment purportedly provided at the PHPs, and who therefore did not qualify for the services," DOJ said.
The psychiatrist falsified medical records and signed false documents to make it appear as if patients admitted to the PHPs needed and received the intensive psychiatric services. He also personally billed Medicare for psychiatric treatment he purportedly provided to Riverside's PHP patients—treatment he never actually provided.
All totaled, Mazcuri's signature enabled Riverside to bill Medicare for more than $55 million of the total $155 million that Riverside billed Medicare.
Sixteen executives, clinicians and assorted scammers have been convicted for their roles in the Riverside fraud, including Earnest Gibson III, 73, the former president of Riverside; Earnest Gibson IV, 41, the operator of one of Riverside’s PHP satellite locations.
Earnest Gibson III was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Earnest Gibson IV was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mohammad Khan, 68, an assistant administrator at the hospital, who managed many of the hospital’s PHPs, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Sharon Iglehart, 61, a physician, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Walid Hamoudi, 66, a physician, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Riverside—Houston's first nonprofit hospital for African Americans—was shuttered soon after the scandal broke in 2012. Harris County (TX) Commissioners voted this spring to buy the hospital and reopen it as a mental health facility.
Two first-year reviews show patient discharges to institutional post-acute care are lower, and hospitals don't appear to be gaming performance measures.
Two new studies in JAMA this week identify moderate successes in the first year of Medicare's Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement bundled payments program.
One study, led by MIT economist Amy Finkelstein, examines changes in discharges to institutional post-acute care after hip or knee replacement surgery in 2016, the first year that the CJR bundled payments were implemented.
The study found that the mean percentage of patients discharge into institutional post-acute care was 33.7% in the control group, which was 2.9 percentage points lower in metropolitan statistical areas covered by the CJR, which the study authors called "a significant difference."
"These interim findings suggest that CJR may reduce institutional post-acute care following lower extremity joint replacement episodes among Medicare beneficiaries," the Finkelstein study said, adding that further evaluation is needed as the program rollout continues.
The second JAMA study, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, also examines the changes in patient discharge to institutional post-acute care in 2016, but looks to see if hospitals are gaming the program by increasing volumes.
The Penn observational study, which examined more than 1.7 million Medicare beneficiaries who underwent lower joint replacement surgery, also found scant evidence that hospitals shift toward healthier patients because bundled payments don't account for severity.
"The lack of associations between Bundled Payments for Care Improvement program participation and changes in volume or the majority of patient case-mix factors may provide reassurance about two potential unintended effects of voluntary bundled payments for lower extremity joint replacement," the Penn study found.
In a JAMA editorial accompanying the two studies, University of Michigan health economist Andrew M. Ryan called the findings "encouraging."
"Given the increasing number of joint replacements at younger and younger ages, it is important that these procedures be a focus of cost and quality initiatives," Ryan said, adding that both studies demonstrate that "prospective payment to hospitals can be improved through common sense and straightforward bundled payment reforms."
However, Ryan said CMS "is rightfully concerned that severity adjustment may become a means for hospitals to up-code severity and 'game' the program."
"This tension between appropriately accounting for variation in hospital risk while minimizing the ability for hospitals to game performance measures is central in alternative payment models," he said.
"One solution may be for CMS to incorporate more risk adjustment in these programs, coupled with more aggressive auditing of hospital records."
CEO Steve Clapp says the four-hospital rural health system 'hit our targets' with expense reductions, but couldn't overcome a 'problematic' decline in net revenues.
Nearly two years after acquiring three rural hospitals in Mississippi and doubling its size, Clinton, Tennessee-based Curae Health has filed for bankruptcy.
Curae Health CEO and President Steve Clapp spoke with HealthLeaders Media about the filing, the factors that led to it, and the challenges facing rural healthcare in the United States. The following is a lightly edited transcript.
HLM: What factors led to the bankruptcy?
Clapp: Our organization is small and doesn't have the deep pockets like other organizations. So, it was very important that we hit the numbers that we needed to make this thing work.
The biggest thing that really hit us was a significant decline in net revenues after we acquired the hospitals. We hit our targets in terms of expense reductions and savings that we had anticipated when we took over. But that net revenue declined was just too problematic.
Physician turnover contributed a little bit. There were delays in the Medicare extender programs in Congress. Those had ceased in October 2017 and didn't get reinstated until the spring, and it was just within the last 60 days that we've been paid on our low-volume adjustment.
We had some challenges obtaining financing on our information systems, so we had to compress a little bit of the financing there. It was just a series of things.
HLM: When you acquired these hospitals it doubled the size of Curae. Do you think that the expansion may have been too rapid?
Clapp: Part of the desire to acquire these hospitals was the proximity to the hospitals that we owned. We felt like we can we can add these hospitals and manage them effectively. We'd had the Alabama hospitals at that point for a little over two years. We thought there were synergies that we could achieve. We had waited a couple years before we made another acquisition, so I felt like the integration was fine. It was a net revenue decline in the big picture.
HLM: What will happen to Curae Health when the bankruptcy proceedings are completed?
Clapp: We'll have one hospital left that's not in bankruptcy in Russellville. We divested the other two hospitals to the local communities in Alabama. We are in the process of seeking buyers for the Russellville hospital as well. We have a letter of intent on that one as well. Curae will eventually divest all of its hospitals. Once all the legal proceedings and processes are worked out we will cease to exist.
The vision was correct in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. But the circumstances didn't plan out to pan out like we had hoped.
HLM: As you look for buyers for these three hospitals, what are the selling points?
Clapp: What attracted us to these hospitals was the fact that they had sufficient revenue. These were larger facilities than we had traditionally focused on, generating anywhere from $35 million to $60 million in revenue. So, they are bigger, and the communities are bigger. These are hospitals that should stay in place and they will in the long term. The community has built a medical community around it to make it work. There's a good physician base in place. There's good community support to keep these hospitals open and operational.
The bankruptcy court process, for lack of a better term, becomes an auction process and our intent is to find stalking horse bidders for each of the hospitals and then there will be an auction process once that initial stalking horse bid is put in place.
HLM: Is Curae Health a microcosm of the problems that rural hospitals face everywhere in this country?
Clapp: Yes. Interestingly enough, we were not the only Mississippi hospital to the file for bankruptcy (on Aug. 24). There was a hospital in Magee. We've seen over 800 rural hospitals close in the last 30 years. That's almost 25%. The number of urban hospitals has stayed flat at about 3,100.
The crisis in healthcare is in rural America, not in urban America. Urban communities are still producing a lot of development projects, a lot of expansion projects at a much higher cost to Medicare and Medicaid than what it would be to keep these smaller hospitals open and provide the services out there.
HLM: Was the Medicaid non-expansion in Mississippi a factor?
Clapp: I'm cautious as to how to address that. There are two sides to that coin. Obviously, from a hospital perspective, you love to have more insured folks. On the flip side, somebody's got to pay for it. That's the balancing act.
HLM: What are the unique challenges for rural hospitals?
Clapp: It depends on who you talk to. Tertiary hospitals will tell you they've got the same problems, but we're not doing $100 million expansions. We've got declining populations in these communities. The younger generation does not necessarily want to live in these communities. We have aging facilities that we're not able to adequately maintain or recapitalize. Some of these states that we operate in, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, have a significant disadvantage relative to wage rate indices. They're particularly low.
HLM: How will rural hospitals evolve to adapt to these challenges?
Clapp: Eventually, rural hospitals are going to end up in one of four buckets. They're either going to end up with a larger health system, or they're going to go back to the community, or at least require some type of community subsidy, like we did 40, 50, 60 years ago.
The third thing is from an operating model perspective. Do we need to create the freestanding outpatient center model that has an emergency room with it? That allows hospitals to transition to another type of entity to ensure that we have some availability of local healthcare.
That can be a freestanding ER, which as originally designed was a good idea. The concept got used in large communities as a competitive tool, rather than as a means to provide emergency services. You don't need one more ER in an urban setting, but you do need one ER and an outlining county that has no other services.
On the outpatient side, it's a piecemeal deal. The primary care is in a physician billing level and your diagnostics and even your surgery can be paid at less-than hospital rates, and the ER becomes more like an urgent care. You can't operate a 50,000-to-100,000 square-foot building on those kinds of reimbursements. We have to create another model.
The fourth option is some of these hospitals will close. If you only have 1,000 admissions, it's hard to justify keeping a hospital open because it's a 24/7 operation. You can create an 18-hour operation that provides for the needs of the community and helps out with the EMS runs that have to go out of town all.
Under a definitive agreement reached this week, Mission Health will continue to manage its seven hospitals in western North Carolina, while HCA runs operations, capital access, predictive modeling and analytics.
HCA Healthcare announced Friday that it will pay $1.5 billion to acquire Mission Health, a seven-hospital, nonprofit health system based in Asheville, North Carolina.
"Mission Health is the premier healthcare system in western North Carolina, with a 130-year tradition of high quality patient care," Milton Johnson, HCA chairman and CEO, said in a media release.
"We look forward to continuing Mission Health’s focus on excellence, and investing in western North Carolina to improve the health of the region," he said.
Under the deal, "nearly all" Mission facilities will become part of HCA while continuing to operate under the Mission brand. Mission will continue to be managed locally while HCA runs operations, capital access, clinical trials, research, predictive modeling, and analytics, the media release said.
Mission Health's tax status would change to for-profit with the acquisition.
The HCA-acquired hospitals are: 763-bed Mission Hospital in Asheville; 80-bed CarePartners Rehabilitation Hospital in Asheville; 49-bed Mission Hospital McDowell in Marion; 25-bed Angel Medical Center in Franklin; 25-bed Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard; 25-bed Blue Ridge Regional Hospital in Spruce Pine; and 24-bed Highlands-Cashiers Hospital in Highlands.
Nashville-based HCA said it will spend $430 million over five years for the completion of the Mission Hospital for Advanced Medicine, building a replacement hospital for Angel Medical Center and building a new Behavioral Health hospital.
The proceeds from the sale will be combined with Mission Health's remaining cash and investments and will be used to fund the newly formed Dogwood Health Trust, a population health initiative serving western North Carolina.
"From the very beginning, Mission Health's Board worked diligently and continually to ensure that the very best path was selected for the people of western North Carolina and to make certain that our community has access to high quality, effective and compassionate care for generations to come," Mission Health Board Chair John R. Ball, MD, JD, said in prepared remarks.
"After completing due diligence and finalizing definitive agreements that have significant protections for our rural communities, we are convinced that HCA Healthcare is the right and best choice for western North Carolina and Mission's team members, providers and patients. It is heartening to share that every single Mission Health member entity Board voted unanimously to approve this transaction," Ball said.
HCA said it will maintain clinical services for at least five years and keep open all rehabilitation and acute-care hospitals for at least 10 years, other than St. Joseph’s Hospital which was already planned for transition.
HCA has agreed not to sell any rehabilitation or acute-care hospital for a minimum of 10 years. None of these protections exist for Mission Health programs or facilities today.
In addition, HCA and Mission will each contribute $25 million to create a $50 million innovation fund to encourage healthcare investment in the region.
The deal is subject to the approval of North Carolina state regulators, including an evaluation by the state's attorney general, to ensure that it will benefit people in the service area, and that HCA is paying a fair price, Mission said.
Four Mississippi hospitals have declared Chapter 11 in the past week, and five rural hospitals in the Magnolia State have closed since 2013.
Curae Health and three affiliated hospitals in Mississippi have filed for bankruptcy protection after claiming more than $96 million in liabilities, the Clinton, Tennessee-based hospital chain announced this week.
The affiliated Mississippi hospitals are: Gilmore Memorial Hospital, in Amory; Panola Medical Center, in Batesville; and Northwest Mississippi Medical Center in Clarksdale, which Curae leases.
Four Mississippi hospitals filed for Chapter 11 in the past week, including unaffiliated Magee General Hospital, which filed last Friday.
Curae said in a media release that the goal of the bankruptcy filing was "to ensure that the communities where these hospitals are located will continue to have access to local healthcare services."
The not-for-profit health system blamed insolvency on "several factors."
"Many rural hospitals across the country have faced year-over-year financial challenges due to government funding cuts, unfunded care mandates and other pressures," Curae said.
"Our hospitals were not immune to these issues and after exhausting other possibilities, the decision was clear that the hospitals could not continue to operate under mounting debt and tightening financial resources," the statement read.
Those pressures included unexpected expenses related to electronic medical records and a cash crunch that came as vendors demanded payment for outstanding debts.
Curae said the bankruptcy became the only viable course because cost-savings measures were outstripped by "a dramatic decline" in net revenues that came immediately after the hospitals were acquired from Community Health Systems in 2016.
Local media reported that bankruptcy filings made in Nashville showed that Curae Health and the three hospitals have $3.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and $96 million in liabilities. It owes lender ServisFirst $18.8 million. It owes Community Health Systems, which previously owned the three hospitals, $28.6 million.
"The conversion to a not-for-profit system combined with a lower cost structure was unable to keep pace with the dramatic decline in revenue," Curae said.
Ownership of Curae's Lakeland Community Hospital in Haleyville, Alabama, was transferred to a local authority this spring and it's now managed by Java Medical Group. Curae's fourth hospital, Russellville Hospital in northwest Alabama, has not filed for bankruptcy.
Going Forward
Curae says its 1,245 employees will be paid through the bankruptcy proceedings.
The health system's Mississippi hospitals "will be sold as going concerns to arms-length third parties who are able to keep them in operation so that they can continue to serve the community."
"All potential acquirers of the hospitals will have the opportunity to express their interest in acquiring one or all of the hospitals and to bid for them in a fair and open process," Curae said.
"We have been working with various interested parties to assist them in their review of the hospital(s) and anticipate filing a motion with the bankruptcy court to authorize the sale of the hospitals in the near term. Once the legal process is completed we hope the hospitals will emerge in a stronger financial and market position," Curae said.
