Healey Admin Seizes St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, CEO Resigns

Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 announced in a press release Friday that the state had officially seized St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center by eminent domain, putting an end to the Brighton hospital’s tumultuous, decade-long stint under for-profit owner Steward Healthcare.

The seizure will allow for the transfer of St. Elizabeth’s, located in Brighton, to South End-based Boston Medical Center and return the hospital to nonprofit ownership, which advocates hope will return the dependability the hospital had begun to lose under Steward’s mismanagement.

The chain’s financial troubles first became public in January, leading to widespread alarm among state and local officials and the public over whether Steward’s nine hospitals in Massachusetts would survive. At a Boston City Council hearing in April, councilors called any potential closures of its two hospitals in Boston “catastrophic.”

Two hospitals ultimately closed — including Carney Hospital in Dorchester — and plans to transfer ownership of six others to local hospital chains were announced in August by the Healey administration and set to take effect Oct. 1. No other hospital will be seized by eminent domain.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Texas approved those deals in bankruptcy court.

While BMC and Steward had reached a deal for the transfer of operations, the asset management firm that owns the land on which it sits refused BMC’s offer. The state is now negotiating with Apollo Global Management over compensation for the seizure of their land.

The seizure comes days before Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre, whose management has come under fire from state leaders since January, is set to step down. De la Torre announced his resignation Saturday, in the wake of news that the U.S. Senate would hold him in contempt of Congress.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions had subpoenaed de la Torre to testify at a hearing on Steward’s bankruptcy this month, but he refused to attend. De la Torre’s attorney wrote in a letter to the committee, which is chaired by Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), that the hearing was “a pseudo-criminal proceeding” meant to “convict Dr. de la Torre in the eyes of public opinion.”

He added it would be inappropriate to attend the hearing while the company was in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings. The Senate nonetheless voted to hold him in contempt of Congress – for the first time in 50 years.

In a statement on the CEO’s departure, Markey wrote “de la Torre’s resignation is not enough, and must be held accountable in the court of law. This resignation comes too late for the workers, patients, and communities that Mr. de la Torre harmed and abandoned.”

January reporting by the Boston Globe revealed at least one instance of a patient dying because of a lack of proper medical equipment at St. Elizabeth’s hospital — which had been repossessed after Steward fell behind on its bills.

Subsequent investigations have found other instances where inadequate staffing and equipment contributed to deaths and injuries at Steward’s hospitals across Massachusetts.

In the fallout from the chain’s bankruptcy, state leaders have received heat from some activists who have said the state should have caught Steward’s woes earlier, and done more to prevent its implosion when its finances first came into question years ago.

State officials have pointed to its yearslong litigation with the company to demand they hand over their finances as one of several steps taken to hold them accountable prior to their collapse.

—Staff writer Jack R. Trapanick can be reached at jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @jackrtrapanick.