YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – As this edition reaches subscribers, a hearing that was scheduled for Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston could have told us more about the fate of three local hospitals. But the hearing was delayed Monday.
Steward Health Care System – which has owned, since 2017, Trumbull Regional Medical Center in Warren, Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland and Sharon Regional Medical Center in Sharon, Pa. – filed for bankruptcy in May and is attempting to sell or close its 31 hospitals and other assets.
Many of Steward’s hospitals have been hopelessly mismanaged, with inoperable equipment and deferred building repairs even as top executives and business partners looted assets. Criminal investigations are underway by multiple agencies.
The greed is personified by CEO Ralph de la Torre, whose lavish lifestyle was cited June 3 in a letter to the United States Trustee by the two senators from Massachusetts and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. Years of “greed and mismanagement by Steward executives,” its landlord and lender, Medical Properties Trust, and private equity investors Cerberus Capital Management “created unsustainable debts and led to Steward’s bankruptcy, putting patients and communities at risk,” the letter said.
The ordeal brings to mind the deindustrialization here 45 years ago when the devastation was attributed to government regulations, organized labor, lack of private investment and shareholders cashing out. Now the Mahoning and Shenango valleys are challenged by the prospect of dehospitalization.
A local group, Warren City Hospital, has formed in an effort to save Trumbull Memorial. The group needs millions and millions of dollars and is asking for public support.
The Christina H. Buhl Legacy Trust, which operated Sharon Regional from 1893 until 2014, the Pennsylvania attorney general and state legislators are working to salvage that hospital.
Little is known about the status of Hillside, although its good reputation as a rehabilitation hospital is believed to make it attractive for purchase if terms can be worked out.
Whether small hospitals can survive in rural and small communities remains uncertain. The aging population and its reliance on Medicare, which pays below the cost of services, makes many hospitals unprofitable. There’s no workable solution in sight.