Steward Health Care CEO faces contempt vote after Senate no-show
By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK, Sept 12 (Reuters) -A U.S. Senate committee said Thursday that it would vote to hold Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre in contempt after he refused to testify about cost-cutting decisions that harmed patients at the bankrupt company's hospitals.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions probed Steward's financial decline at a hearing without de la Torre, hearing from witnesses who said that Steward prioritized corporate profits over patient care.
The committee's leaders, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, said the committee would vote next week to bring criminal contempt charges and a civil enforcement action against de la Torre for ignoring their subpoena.
"We need to keep this from happening again, and that means we need answers," Cassidy said Thursday.
Steward, the largest privately owned hospital network in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in May, seeking to sell all of its 31 hospitals and address its $9 billion in debt. The company has sold several hospitals since filing for bankruptcy.
De la Torre said in a Thursday statement that it would be inappropriate for him to testify about Steward's finances while the company is negotiating court-supervised bankruptcy settlements. De la Torre also said that lawmakers had "pre-determined his guilt."
Steward Health Care declined to comment.
In de la Torre’s absence, the committee heard from two Massachusetts nurses, a Louisiana mayor and a Louisiana state representative about Steward's poor management of hospitals in two states.
Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, said that patients died because of reduced spending on emergency room staffing and life-saving medical equipment.
Steward was unwilling even to pay for "bereavement boxes" that the hospital had previously used to transport infants that had died, forcing nurses "to put babies' remains in cardboard shipping boxes," MacInnis said.
Read more:
Steward Health gets approval for landlord settlement, Florida hospital sales
Bankrupt Steward Health approved to sell six Massachusetts hospitals at a loss
Bankrupt Steward Health puts its hospitals up for sale, discloses $9 bln in debt
Reporting by Dietrich Knauth
Berita Terkini
Penafian: Entiti XM Group menyediakan perkhidmatan pelaksanaan sahaja dan akses ke Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian, yang membolehkan sesorang melihat dan/atau menggunakan kandungan yang ada di dalam atau melalui laman web, tidak bertujuan untuk mengubah atau memperluas, juga tidak mengubah atau mengembangkannya. Akses dan penggunaan tersebut tertakluk kepada: (i) Terma dan Syarat; (ii) Amaran Risiko; dan Penafian Penuh. Oleh itu, kandungan sedemikian disediakan tidak lebih dari sekadar maklumat umum. Terutamanya, perlu diketahui bahawa kandungan Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian bukan permintaan, atau tawaran untuk melakukan transaksi dalam pasaran kewangan. Berdagang dalam mana-mana pasaran kewangan melibatkan tahap risiko yang besar terhadap modal anda.
Semua bahan yang diterbitkan di Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian kami bertujuan hanya untuk tujuan pendidikan/maklumat dan tidak mengandungi – dan tidak boleh dianggap mengandungi nasihat kewangan, cukai pelaburan atau dagangan dan cadangan, atau rekod harga dagangan kami, atau tawaran, atau permintaan untuk suatu transaksi dalam sebarang instrumen kewangan atau promosi kewangan yang tidak diminta kepada anda.
Sebarang kandungan pihak ketiga serta kandungan yang disediakan oleh XM, seperti pendapat, berita, penyelidikan, analisis, harga, maklumat lain atau pautan ke laman web pihak ketiga yang terdapat dalam laman web ini disediakan berdasarkan "seadanya" sebagai ulasan pasaran umum dan bukanlah nasihat pelaburan. Sesuai dengan apa-apa kandungan yang ditafsir sebagai penyelidikan pelaburan, anda mestilah ambil perhatian dan menerima bahawa kandungan tersebut tidak bertujuan dan tidak sediakan berdasarkan keperluan undang-undang yang direka untuk mempromosikan penyelidikan pelaburan bebas dan oleh itu, ia dianggap sebagai komunikasi pemasaran di bawah peraturan dan undang-undang yang berkaitan. SIla pastikan bahawa anda telah membaca dan memahami Notifikasi mengenai Penyelidikan Pelaburan Bukan Bebas dan Amaran Risiko mengenai maklumat di atas yang boleh diakses di sini.
