Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren testified Wednesday inside Beacon Hill's largest public hearing room, slamming Steward Healthcare's chief executive officer for financial decisions that have put Massachusetts' operations in jeopardy. The company created a vacancy for CEO Ralph de la Torre, who had refused. hospital.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing exploring the harms of private capital in health care, Markey and Warren also spoke about regulating private investment in health care, protecting the quality of patient care, and stewarding health crises like stewards. promoted two new proposals aimed at preventing a recurrence. Currently being rolled out across the country.
As Markey pointed out, Steward's footprint extends beyond hospitals in Massachusetts to other facilities in Ohio, Florida, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Texas, he said. These facilities also lack necessary supplies.
Mr. Markey said Mr. Delatorre refused to speak at the hearing, and Mr. Steward also refused to send another official to answer questions from lawmakers.
“Their witness stand was empty today. It was as empty as the promise that Steward and Mr. Ralph de la Torre made to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Markey said in the Gardner Auditorium, which lasted just under two hours. He spoke to reporters after the hearing.
“Therefore, we intend to ensure that Dr. de la Torre and Steward are nationally known and serve as an example of the dangers of allowing private equity to take over our health care system.”Marquee He continued. “And we will not stop until we put safeguards in place to protect our patients and protect our doctors and nurses from looting our health care system.”
Mr. Markey, Mr. Warren and state lawmakers brought the company's financial problems into the public domain earlier this year, in part due to unpaid rent from the sale of Steward's properties to Medical Properties Trust. As a result, they trained to focus on Steward. Gov. Maura Healey reprimanded Steward for failing to provide financial documents to state regulators and called for the company to exit the federal health care market.
A Steward spokeswoman declined to comment on why Delatorre did not appear at the Capitol. The spokesperson also declined to discuss scathing comments made by senators about Mr. Delatorre and the company during the hearing.
Warren called De La Torre's absence “despicable.”
“Dr. de la Torre should be ashamed,” Warren said. “He owes the people of Massachusetts an accountability for his role in the looting of Steward Hospital.”
Markey said last week that Steward “represents a national problem that requires a national solution” and calls for transparency and accountability reforms “to ensure our country has a health care system, not one for the rich.” said it was necessary.
Markey said the bill announced Wednesday, called the Health Over Wealth Act, could increase transparency and accountability for private equity and for-profit companies. Markey will ensure private equity firms have funding to protect access to patient care and give healthcare professionals and patients a “louder voice” to consider and block potential deals. It said it would require commercial companies to disclose financial and information information. Staffing levels, among other factors.
His proposal would require private equity-owned health care entities to pay for debt, fees collected by private equity firms, dividends paid by health care entities to private equity funds, lobbying and political spending, Require reporting on sale/leaseback agreements, lease payments, interest, etc. It is paid for through lines of credit and transactions with vendors or service providers.
Markey said senators are seeking to prevent “Steward's failures from becoming the standard of care in America” and are taking public comments until May 3.
Warren said Wednesday that she would introduce legislation to regulate private equity in the health care sector.
Warren said her proposal would prohibit health care providers receiving federal funding from selling or mortgaging assets to real estate investment trusts. It would also give the federal government the power to recover paybacks from health care executives and private equity investors who “endanger the survival of hospitals through predatory financial engineering,” he said.
“Frankly, private equity slack in the health care system is killing people,” Warren said. “Steward Healthcare is a clear example of private equity abusing for-profit health care. Investors got rich by looting hospitals, but nurses, doctors, and other workers… We tried very hard to provide care. We ran out of supplies, the contractors pulled out, we weren't getting paid.”
Steward Healthcare, reeling from a financial crisis that could put several Massachusetts hospitals in jeopardy, is “a castle in the sand, a showpiece,” Gov. Maura Healey said a week ago, calling for-profit health care continues to be harshly criticized. The system is one of the state's largest employers. Follow NBC10 Boston… Instagram: instagram.com/nbc10boston TikTok: tiktok.com/@nbc10boston Facebook: facebook.com/NBC10Boston X: twitter.com/NBC10Boston
Dr. Elana Stinson said she previously worked as an emergency physician at three Steward facilities, including Kearney Hospital in Dorchester. Ms. Stinson said she reflected on how resources and specialized services had diminished, and she felt she was no longer able to provide safe, high-quality care.
Private equity firms have led the acquisitions and acquisitions of more than 30% of U.S. hospitals, said Stinson, president of the New England Medical Association.
“Having spent time in other PE facilities around the country, it appears that in some areas the level of deprivation was even worse,” Stinson said. “Increased wait times and severe staff shortages have resulted in dangerous boarding levels and patient-to-nurse ratios in emergency departments, sometimes as high as 14:1.”
Dr. Donald Barwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said patients are suffering unprecedented consequences because private equity investors prioritize profits over the health system's fundamental mission of curing people. warned that they faced no risk.
Barwick, president emeritus of the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, said reforms are needed to prevent private equity firms from threatening the “adequacy and quality of health care.”
“The typical private equity approach of loading hospitals with money, siphoning capital, and leaving dysfunctional organizations in bankruptcy or worse should be banned,” Barwick said. Ta. “Personally, I would like to prohibit private equity firms from owning or controlling health care delivery.”
Steward's for-profit model has ripple effects across health care, including nonprofit hospitals, which must adapt their operations and patient efforts to remain competitive, Barwick said.
“We're one system, so we can't damage one component without seeing damage downstream,” Barwick says.
Michael Curry, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Federation of Community Health Centers, issued a similar warning during a listening session hosted by Markey last week. Curry said Steward's crisis “poses a serious threat to health center patients and the community's access to care.”
“Health centers will step in by any means necessary, because health centers are inherently about serving the needs of the communities they serve. “It's becoming more difficult each day to carry out these tasks,” Curry said. “As we shared with Senator Markey today, we are calling on policymakers to provide critical feedback on how the growth of for-profit health care is contributing to the challenges facing our system. I urge you to pay attention.”
The state Legislature also held an information hearing last week on private equity in the health care sector.
Accelerating private equity investment across the nation's health care system, including hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician specialties, is driving up patient costs and lowering the quality of care, researchers say told the committee. financing.
The committee was presented with options that would strengthen states' regulatory authority over health care transactions, particularly options that would expand the ability of health policy commissions to impose conditions on proposed major changes to health care organizations.
The committee's co-chairs, Sen. Cindy Friedman and Rep. John Rohn, attended part of Wednesday's hearing.
“Last Monday, Sen. Friedman held an excellent hearing here at the Statehouse, and our intention is to work with her and other state legislative leaders to ensure that Massachusetts has safeguards against a repeat of Steward. “It's about making sure we're leaders in taking action,” Markey told reporters.
HPC announced it would review its deal to sell Steward Healthcare's physician network to for-profit insurer Optum Care, a deal that immediately raised red flags to House Speaker Ron Mariano and Warren last week. , warned that “there are serious concerns under antitrust law.'' '' Warren said Optum already covers more than 10% of the nation's physicians.
Barwick called Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, “another aggressive for-profit company.” He predicted that costs for patients would increase if the deal went ahead.
“They're definitely experts in the world of upcoding,” Barwick said, adding that the term means “charging more,” Warren said.
Warren was concerned about Steward's collapse, stressing that a solution was needed and that “this is not an opportunity to make things worse.”
“A quick sale to another outside investor could do more harm than good,” Warren said.
“Federal and state regulators should think once, think twice, and think three times before letting another corporate investor suck more money out of the steward system,” he added to applause.
