Healthcare network under scrutiny on Capitol Hill following bankruptcy and hospital closures

The CEO of a nationwide healthcare system may soon face criminal contempt charges after refusing to testify on Capitol Hill.

Steward Health Care CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre was subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate. Lawmakers wanted to question him about the financial crisis plaguing the private, for-profit hospital network.

Thursday, former and current nurses from these hospitals warned Senators that the patients’ lives are at risk under de la Torre’s management.

“We have IV pumps and computers with battery lives of 7-10 seconds,” said Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.

“We were forced to transfer patients to other facilities because we didn’t have the physical bed for them to lay down in,” said Audra Sprague, a former nurse at Nashoba Valley Medical Center.

During Thursday’s hearing, these nurses from Steward Health Care hospitals told Congress the company stripped facilities of necessary funding which has led to understaffing and limited resources for patient care.

Audra Sprague said the damaging effect of staffing concerns firsthand as an employee and as a parent. She told lawmakers one night her son needed emergency care, so she took him to the hospital’s emergency room.

But when they arrived, Sprague said there were only two nurses on duty with 18 people in the waiting room. That night, she cared for her own son as his nurse.

“I had to be his nurse that night and not his mother and he deserved to have both,” said Sprague. “He deserved to have a one-on-one nurse and a mother to support him and I wasn’t able to do that.”

In other cases, nurses warn that limited supplies and medical equipment lead to deadly outcomes.

“When a patient becomes less well, or they die because the resources that they need were unavailable - that’s greed,” said MacInnis.

Steward, the private for-profit hospital network, filed for bankruptcy in May which impacted more than 30 hospitals across eight states. Recently, the company closed two hospitals in Massachusetts.

“Steward’s greed has put lives at risk and their action is going to kill people,” said Sprague. “They have unchecked greed across the board and it’s not just a business failure, it’s a human tragedy waiting to happen in our region.”

Despite multiple requests to testify including a subpoena, the chair reserved for Dr. de la Torre remained empty at Thursday’s congressional hearing.

“Dr. de la Torre is a coward. He would not come here and allow you to confront him with the reality of what he has left as his legacy,” said Sen. Ed Markey, (D) Massachusetts.

In a letter to lawmakers, attorneys for de la Torre said the senate committee is seeking to turn the hearing into “a pseudo-criminal proceeding in which they use the time, not to gather facts, but to convict Dr. de la Torre in the eyes of public opinion.”

Both Democrats and Republicans say they will keep pushing to hold him accountable.

“We need answers and it seems the principle to give those answers is Dr. Ralph de la Torre,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, (R) Louisiana. “This is what our bipartisan work has been about - answers for our constituents, answers to inform legislation.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey is leading one effort to try to crack down on companies, like Steward Health Care.

He introduced the Health Over Wealth Act in July. The proposal would require more transparency for private equity firms and for-profit companies that own healthcare operations.

According to the bill summary, the legislation would create safeguards to help protect workers, patients, and health care quality, access, and safety at these facilities.

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