US Senate to indict Steward Health CEO for contempt of court | News, Sports, Jobs

BOSTON — Members of a Senate committee investigating the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care have announced they will pass two resolutions next week to hold Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre in contempt of court. One resolution will be civilly enforced, the other a certificate to the U.S. Attorney for criminal contempt of court. De la Torre refused to attend a U.S. Senate hearing on Thursday despite a subpoena.

If adopted, both resolutions will be submitted to the full Senate for a vote.

The first resolution directs the Senate Counsel to file a civil suit compelling de la Torre to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The criminal contempt resolution would refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to prosecute de la Torre for failure to comply with the subpoena.

“We had hoped that Dr. de la Torre would comply with our bipartisan subpoena and appear before the committee to testify about the harm Steward has caused to patients, health care workers and the communities in which they live,” said the committee's chairman, Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

“Unfortunately, we have no choice but to proceed and pursue both civil enforcement of the subpoena and criminal charges against Dr. de la Torre,” he added.

In a written statement, Steward defended de la Torre's decision not to attend the hearing and to again request a rescheduling, saying not only was it inappropriate for him to testify while Steward's bankruptcy case was ongoing, but a federal court had barred him from doing so.

“The committee continues to ignore the fact that a settlement is currently being sought with all interested parties that will pave the way to keep all of Steward's remaining hospitals open and preserve jobs,” the statement said. “Dr. de la Torre will not do anything that would jeopardize these efforts.”

The announcement of the vote scheduled for next week following a hearing on Steward.

Sanders said de la Torre and his Texas-based company Steward, which operates about 30 hospitals nationwide and filed for bankruptcy in May, are a prime example of what happens when private equity investors buy hospitals, strip them of their assets and saddle them with debt they can never repay.

“Dr. de la Torre became outrageously wealthy by burdening hospitals from Massachusetts to Arizona with billions of dollars in debt and selling the land on which those hospitals stood to real estate managers,” Sanders said.

Steward sought to sell his more than half a dozen hospitals in Massachusetts, but received inadequate offers for two other hospitals – Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in the town of Ayer – both of which closed as a result.

A federal bankruptcy court last week approved Steward's sale of other Massachusetts hospitals.

Steward also closed pediatric wards in Massachusetts and Louisiana, closed neonatal wards in Florida and Texas, and eliminated the maternity ward of a Florida hospital.

At the same time, de la Torre personally earned hundreds of millions of dollars and bought a $40 million yacht and a $15 million luxury fishing boat, Sanders said.

Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, testified at the hearing that patients were exposed to avoidable harm and even death under the direction of stewards, especially in understaffed emergency rooms.

An 81-year-old man who had been admitted for chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer died before staff could care for him, MacInnis said. He said there were 95 patients in the emergency room that shift, but only 11 nurses.

She said there were nights when emergency room staff ran out of Similac, Pedialyte or even diapers and had to run to a convenience store for supplies. She also said there was an instance when Steward failed to pay a vendor who delivered bereavement boxes for the remains of deceased newborns that needed to be taken to the morgue.

“Nurses were forced to pack the babies' remains into shipping boxes,” she said. “These nurses pooled their own money, went to Amazon and bought the funeral boxes.”

MacInnis also referred to the death of a 39-year-old woman who had a normal birth but suffered from bleeding and could have potentially been saved by a device called an embolization coil. However, the hospital did not have any embolization coils because they had been recalled by the vendor.