Gov. Maura Healey's office said Friday that Steward Health Care did not meet the administration's deadline to provide financial information to state regulators, as required by law.
“The financial information that Steward provided this week continues to be incomplete and insufficient. What Steward must do from this point forward is clear — complete an orderly transition out of Massachusetts,” Karissa Hand, spokesperson for Gov. Healey, said in a statement.
Earlier this week, Healey told Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre that he has kept the hospitals' financial condition "in a black box," despite state law requiring hospital systems to disclose certain financial statements and amid recent "reports of mismanagement, unpaid vendors, legally questionable practices and exorbitant profits for your equity partners and yourself, all while your hospitals continued to struggle financially."
The state Department of Public Health has been conducting daily monitoring visits at Steward's Massachusetts hospitals and officials say they've been talking with leaders across the health care spectrum in Massachusetts about what will come next for Steward's patients and more than 15,000 workers amid the system's money woes.
"The time has come to move past our many months of discussions and begin executing a safe, orderly transition of your seven licensed facilities in Massachusetts to new operators as soon as possible," Healey said in her letter.
Ahead of the Friday deadline, officials at the Dallas-based hospital chain said they'd welcome a chance to meet with the governor to discuss their "orderly departure" from Massachusetts.
"We guarantee that it is our priority to orchestrate a transition that emphasizes the continuity of first-class medical care in the communities we serve," Dr. Michael Callum, Steward's executive vice president for physician services and interim president for the New England region, wrote to Healey this week. "We look forward to continuing a productive dialogue with your Administration to effectuate this plan in short order."
Steward operates two hospitals in Boston — Carney Hospital in Dorchester and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton —along with Saint Anne's Hospital in Fall River, Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Morton Hospital in Taunton, and Holy Family hospitals in Methuen and Haverhill. Another Steward facility, Norwood Hospital, has been closed due to flood damage, and Steward plans to shutter its New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton in April.
The concept of transferring those facilities to new owners may mark a point of common ground between Healey and Steward leaders, but it's not clear that they'll be on the same page when it comes to financial disclosure.
Callum said that Steward has provided Healey's health secretariat and Attorney General Andrea Campbell's office with tens of thousands of pages' worth of "financial and operating materials over the past two months" and will provide its 2023 financials when they are available.
"We have played with our cards face up on these data requests, using teams of professionals to interact with multiple state officials and to gather and produce data into the night and over weekends," Callum wrote.
He said the Steward team has also met in-person with Campbell, and met with Healey on Jan. 10, in addition to discussions with state and federal lawmakers and other officials.
