Health Care

Edward Aldag Jr., the chairman and CEO of Medical Properties Trust, and other members of the firm’s leadership group told financial analysts that the rents the Alabama-based company is charging Steward for its hospitals are not excessive and that they fully expect those rents to remain at or near current levels when the hospitals are sold to “better qualified operators” over the next several months.

If the Optum purchase moves forward, Steward will directly transfer the previous provider agreements to Optum without an opportunity for physicians to negotiate a new deal, despite an entirely new corporate change-over.

On The Codcast, Donahue reflected on the history of health planning councils in conversation with hosts Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute and John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“The big flashy hospitals that everybody thinks about when we think about the largess of American health care – and they have incredible accomplishments happening inside their walls – one of the things we notice is that not only does it not translate to local communities, but hospitals actually turn out to be pretty poor neighbors a lot of the time and actually have negative effects,” said Jonathan Wynn, chair and professor of sociology at UMass Amherst.

As pressure ramps up to find a way to shore up the nine Massachusetts hospitals owned by Steward, which employ about 3,000 nurses represented by the nurses association, Pinkham worries that the state may be in the same position that let Steward get a foothold at the core of the state’s health care system more than a decade ago.

After a meeting on Monday with top legislative leaders at the State House, Healey said the company’s failure to provide audited financial statements beyond 2021 in response to a demand letter from the governor is evidence that the company’s books are in disarray and no auditor will sign off on them.

“What we have right now in Massachusetts for the nation is we have a new poster child of private equity and his name is Dr. Ralph de la Torre,” said John McDonough.

Steward earlier this week said it provided the state with an enormous amount of financial data, but administration officials said audited financial statements were not included.

Officials reported a $664 million loss in the fourth quarter, prompted by $772 million in writeoffs and impairments related to Steward. Company officials said Steward paid only a quarter of the rent it owed during the quarter.