Steward Health Care, a privately-owned company based in Dallas, Texas, has announced plans to sell all of its 31 U.S. hospitals, including nine in Massachusetts, following a recent bankruptcy declaration. The company intends to auction off the hospitals in an effort to generate funds to pay down its $9 billion debt. Steward plans to hold auctions for hospitals outside of Florida on June 28, with the Florida hospitals to follow on July 30. Despite the bankruptcy filing, both the company and Massachusetts officials have assured that there will be no interruptions in day-to-day hospital operations.
The decision to sell the hospitals comes after a year-and-a-half-long investigation by CBS News into Steward Health Care, which uncovered a significant amount of unpaid bills at Steward hospitals across the country. This has raised concerns about potential shortages of vital medical supplies at the facilities. In response to the situation, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s administration has launched a hotline and website for patients with inquiries.
In a statement following Steward’s bankruptcy filing, Governor Healey emphasized that the situation was caused by greed, mismanagement, and lack of transparency on the part of Steward leadership in Dallas, Texas. The governor pledged to work to prevent such an occurrence from happening in the future. Matt Schooley, a digital producer at CBS Boston
