Steward Health Care’s financial crisis will be addressed in an April congressional hearing

Steward Health Care’s disastrous financial state wreaking havoc on Massachusetts hospitals and patients will be a key focus in a congressional hearing that U.S. Sen. Ed Markey will be chairing in April, while the health system continues to receive increased scrutiny.

Gov. Maura Healey has demanded the Dallas-based system – the largest private for-profit healthcare network in the country – to leave the Bay State and transfer its nine hospitals to other operators. But as Steward maintains its presence, running the gamut of Eastern Massachusetts, anger and uncertainty grows.

Steward reportedly owes $50 million in unpaid rent, according to a press release issued last month by its owner, Medical Properties Trust, Inc. The system is also the subject of more than a dozen lawsuits in Massachusetts filed by vendors and employees over unpaid invoices since 2022,

Markey will be leading a hearing that will “investigate” the role of for-profit companies in the country’s healthcare system on April 3 in Boston, a development he announced Friday during a visit to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.

A Steward official last month said the system had secured a $60 million bridge loan to cover the overdue rent which he said would “help stabilize” the company and save some of its Massachusetts hospitals from shuttering.

Four of Steward’s hospitals — Nashoba Valley in Ayer, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, Holy Family in Haverhill and Methuen, and Norwood, which has been closed since a devastating flood in June 2020 — had faced the risk of reportedly being closed.

When asked whether it’s certain that the hospitals will remain open, Markey said that will be “the focus of the hearing.”

“We are going to elevate the voices of the workers and the patients,” he said. “We are going to identify permanent systemic solutions that will have to be put in place to ensure the hospitals are not polluted for the wellbeing of private, wealthy millionaires and billionaires at the expense of patients.”

At least one Massachusetts hospital that Steward operates, New England Sinai, will be shuttering. The company announced in December that it’d be closing the Stoughton facility in April after losing $22 million

The state has installed Department of Public Health staff at all Steward hospitals to ensure safety and quality care standards in recent weeks.

U.S. Rep Lori Trahan slammed Steward’s lack of clarity around Steward’s financial shortcomings during a Congressional committee in late January, when she called for more transparency into the “disastrous” role of private equity in the financial instability threatening hospitals in Massachusetts.

Markey highlighted how he believes Steward let itself fall into what he called “uncontrollable debt,” triggering medical equipment to be “repossessed” and doctors, nurses and public health officials scrambling for patient safety.

Steward received $675 million in federal COVID relief money, Markey said before blasting company chief executive officer Ralph de la Torre’s handling of the money

“They took taxpayer dollars to float on their yachts all while their hospitals, the Steward hospitals,” Markey said, “drowned in debt without the revenues they needed in order to provide the services for the community.”

The Boston Globe has reported that de la Torre is the owner of a $40-million, 190-foot yacht featuring six bedrooms, a gym, living room and dining room, and a $15-million sport fishing boat that has hallways, bedrooms and full-sized baths.

“The corporate CEOs who run for-profit companies like Steward aren’t the hardworking health care workers, they aren’t patients on Medicaid and Medicare that Steward serves,” Markey said. “They are greedy corporate CEOs sitting in their boardroom making money off of patients in emergency rooms.”