Bernie Sanders Leads Senate HELP Committee Hearing On Impacts Of Steward Health Care's Bankruptcy

[Laughter] dysfunctional and cruel too often it is a system that is designed not or can we turn that down a little bit please too often it is a system that is designed not to make patients well but to make Health Care Executives and stockholders extraordinarily wealthy there could not be a clearer example of that than private Equity billionaires on Wall Street who are making billions by purchasing hospitals throughout our country stripping all of their assets and loading them up with debt that these hospitals could never pay back perhaps more than anyone else in America Ralph de Lori the CEO of Stewart Healthcare is the post the child for this outrageous type of corporate greed that is permeating our for-profit health care System working in partnership with the private Equity Firm cbus Dr delatori became obscenely wealthy by loading up hospitals from Massachusetts to Arizona with billions of dollars in debt and selling the land underneath these hospitals to real estate Executives at Medical properties trust who charged unsustainably High rents as a result of Dr dori's elaborate Financial scheme Steward Healthcare and the more than 30 hospitals it owns in eight states declared bankruptcy with some 9 billion do in debt but let's be clear Steward's severe financial problems did not happen overnight they have been going on for more than a decade it has been estimated that at least 15 patients at hospitals owned by Stewart died as a result of a lack of medical equipment or Staffing shortages and that at least 2,000 other patients were put in serious risk according to Federal Regulators since 2019 federal inspectors have cited steart own hospitals over 30 times for putting patients in quote unquote immediate Jeopardy meaning that patients died were put at grave risk or were injured in 2014 Stuart shut down the Quincy Medical Center Massachusetts with the exception of its emergency room which had shut down six years later today Quincy is the largest city in Massachusetts with without an emergency room in 2018 STW shut down the Northside Regional Medical Center in Youngstown Ohio closing the only labor and delivery unit in that City for pregnant women and their babies and laying off 468 health care workers in the process last year Stewart shut down the Texas fist Medical Center the main Health Care option for San Antonio's Southside after it missed over 600 $50,000 in payments to Medical suppliers leaving the hospital with a severe shortage of respiratory masks among many other things last month State Regulators required Steward to shut down St Luke's Behavioral Center in Phoenix Arizona after they found that it had been with after they found that it had been without air conditioning in Phoenix as temperatures soared past 100° putting more than 70 patients at risk RK of heat exposure Stewart has also shut down pediatric Wards in Massachusetts Louisiana closed neonatal units in Florida and Texas and eliminated maternity services at a hospital in Florida we know that Stuart has gone bankrupt we know that several of its hospitals have already been forced to close their doors because they ran out of money but the question that is interesting to me is in in the midst of all of that how is the main person behind all of these efforts Dr delator how's he doing financially while hospitals shut down while patients go without care while healthcare workers lose their jobs how has Dr delatori been doing in terms of his own Financial well-being and the answer is that he has been doing phenomenally well well stward was busy shutting down hospitals the companies he owned received $250 million in compensation Over a four-year period let me repeat he personally received hundreds of millions of dollars some of which remember Hospital shut down patients without care workers being laid off and some of that money he used to purchase this $40 million yacht while L's hospitals were severely understaffed patients were not getting the care they desperately needed Dr delatori was able to afford this $15 million customade luxury fishing boat $15 million fishing boat while patients were dying while stuid owned hospitals could not afford to pay for life- saving medical supplies it had enough money to purchase a $62 million private jet and incredibly a $33 million backup jet that Dr delatori and his family used for non-b business trips throughout the world while steuart's hospitals were laying off hundreds of workers delator made a $10 million charitable contribution to an exclusive Prep School in Dallas that was fully paid for by Stewart Healthcare not his own personal funds how many of Stewart's hospitals could have been prevented from closing down how many lives could have been saved how many health care workers would still have their jobs today if Dr delatori spent 160 million on highquality Health Care at the hospitals he managed instead of a yacht to private jets a luxury fishing boat and a huge contribution to a wealthy prep school today we will be hearing from nurses in Massachusetts and from public officials in Louisiana who have firsthand knowledge of the harm Stewart has caused the patients the healthcare workers and the communities the communities in which they live I look forward to hearing from these panelists very soon as the chairman of this committee I look forward to working with ranking member CID and I want to thank him and his staff for their cooperation on this effort Senator Moy and I want to thank Senator Moy for his leadership is from Massachusetts they have been very hard hit by Stewart and I hope that we will be working together every Senator Democrat and Republican to hold Dr delatori accountable for his financial mismanagement and his greed but let me conclude by saying this Dr delor did not act alone who else besides delor benefited financially as a result of steuart's bankruptcy cerebrus the private Equity Firm he partnered with made an estimated $800 million profit from its investments in Stewart Healthcare from 2017 through 2021 the CEO of medical properties trust received about 70 million in bonuses stock awards and salary how much of that compensation came as a result of his financial arrangements with Stewart the collapse of Stewart Healthcare is just one extreme example of the damaging role in my view that private Equity is having on our healthc care system private Equity firms have bought up hundreds of hospitals thousands of nursing homes and tens of thousands of medical practices saddling them up with unsustainable debt and stripping their assets to make huge profits for their Executives and their invests study after study has shown that on average when a private Equity Firm takes over a hospital a nursing home or another medical provider the price of healthare goes up the quality goes down and healthcare workers are asked to do much more with fewer and fewer staff the issue of private equity and Healthcare is an issue this committee must look into we cannot allow wealthy private Equity Executives to treat our Health Care system as their own personal piggy bank Health Care in America in my view must be a human right for every man woman and child in this country and not simply an opportunity for billionaire investments in in investors to make huge profits Senator C Senator cassid I want to thank you for your hard work on this and you are recognized for an opening statement thank you Senator Sanders for months this committee is engaged in a bipartisan investigation into the bankruptcy of the steward Healthcare and the impact on the delivery of its Care at its hospitals and I would add therefore on the impact of the health care of the patients those those that those hospitals served it was quickly evident that breaking down the management decisions of chief executive offic officer Dr Ralph delatori is essential to understand Steward's financial problems Steward's bankruptcy has Nationwide implications impacting more than 30 hospitals across eight States including Glenwood Regional Medical Center in West Monroe Louisiana according to a report from the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services a physician at Glennwood told a Louisiana state inspector the hospital was performing third world medicine that's a quote because of management decisions resulting in limited resources at Glennwood the state had to force the hospital to operate at one third capacity one patient died waiting for a transfer to another hospital because Glennwood lacked resources to treat Glennwood is also the largest employer in West Monroe and West washingto Parish at one point employing 9% of the community now hospitals like Glenwood are essential to the both physical and Financial Health of the communities they serve we need to keep this from happening again that means we need answers and it seems the principle to give that answer is Dr Ralph Dori and this is what our bipartisan work has been about answers for our constituents answers to inform legislative Solutions unfortunately Dr D Tor has refused to testify voluntarily as a result the committee issued a subpoena in July up until September the 4th Dr DEA to's lawyers intended indicated he intended to comply with the subpoena and to testify however eight days before the hearing Dr D Tori informed the committee that he would not comply with the subpoena we responded to Dr D Tor explaining why his objections to the committee subpoena have no merit and directed him to comply now a witness cannot disregard and evade a duly authorized subpoena therefore today the chair and I will be asking the committee to report a resolution to authorize civil enforcement and criminal contempt proceedings against Dr deori requiring compliance with the subpoena I thank the chair for working with me on this critically important issue I believe our actions today are a testament to what bipartisanship can accomplish on behalf of Americans on behalf of patients thank you thank you Senator Cas again I want to thank you uh and your staff for their bipartisan efforts uh as Senator Cassidy mentioned our first witness is Dr delor but as I think uh everybody can see Dr delator uh is not here he was subed to testify at 10: a.m. this morning on September 4th 2024 Council for Dr delatori sent a letter to the committee objecting to the compell testimony and declining to comply with a the next day the committee overruled these objections in their entirety and informed his attorneys that we expected to see Dr delator today Dr delatori is not present in the room at this time so I now call up our second panel of witnesses panel if you would come to the Das we would appreciate it for let me thank uh all of our Witnesses we have four excellent Witnesses from Massachusetts Louisiana we thank them all for being here uh Senator Mari has played a very important role in driving this investigation and has that had a huge impact on communities throughout Massachusetts so Senator M i' would appreciate it very much if you can introduce our first two witnesses thank you Mr chairman very much and thank thanks to you and ranking member Cassidy for your leadership on this issue um again I continue to be grateful for partnering with the subcommittee hearing that we had in April up in Boston uh to hold Stewart Health um accountable uh greed thrives in the dark and these Witnesses are bringing this story Into the Light so our first witness is Miss Ellen mcginness uh thank you for being here today Miss mcginness serves on the Massachusetts nurses Association board of directors she has worked as a nurse for 35 years including over 25 years at St Elizabeth's Medical Center a steward owned Hospital Miss mcginness worked in the coronary Care Unit in the medical Intensive Care Unit and for 20 years in the emergency department so we thank you uh Miss mcginness uh for your testimony uh and uh we very much appreciate your leadership on this issue right from the very beginning uh and let's introduce the other witness as well and then we'll uh introduce all the witnesses and then we'll hear the testimony and the next witness is uh Mrs Audra sprag uh thank you for being here Mrs sprag served as the co-chair of the Massachusetts Nurses Association at the nooba Valley Medical Center since 2015 she has also served as a member of the Massachusetts Board of registration in nursing since 2021 Mrs sprag worked at the Valley Medical Center in the emergency department for 17 years she alongside almost 500 health care workers and administrators lost their jobs late last month when the bankruptcy court approved Nashoba Valley's closure due to Dr dori's Financial mismanagement of Steward we thank you uh for being here we thank all the hardworking healthc care workers like you and Mrs mcginness who are fighting for patience not just in Massachusetts but all AC across our country uh you continue to save lives even as the resources were being drained out of your hospital thank you Senator codyy do you want to introduce the uh panelist from Louisiana please although they're not sited in that order I'm going to ask Miss Mitchell mayor Mitchell to go first so I'll introduce her first um Stacy Mitchell is the mayor of West Monroe Louisiana has held this role since 2018 mayor Mitchell has served her community for many years previously as an alderman for West Monroe and owning a successful business for 20 years she also served as a serves as a board member of Glennwood and her role on that board gives us insight into the day-to-day operations of Glennwood and their challenges she holds a Bachelor's of Science and agriculture economics from Louisiana State University um and mayor Mitchell thank you for being here and by the way I Trust West Monroe is doing well with the hurricane um and next I will introduce um representative state representative Michael Eckles um and Michael is um uh state representative first elected in 2019 representing district 14 which includes Monroe and washingto Parish representative EOL serves on a number of important committees including the Health and Welfare committee where he has spent significant time investigating Glennwood Regional Medical Center and their mismanagement and he'll bring to this table the insights learn from the Louisiana legislative sessions he holds a Bachelor of Science and accounting from the University of Louisiana Monroe and MBA from the University of Louisiana Monroe thank you both for being here thank you Senator Cassidy uh M mcginness the floor is yours and thank you very much for being with us today just make sure the mic is on and talk into it and hold it close to your mouth though please little closer little bit closer okay thank you Senator s thank you thank you Senator sandz and members of this committee my name is Ellen mckinness I'm a nurse at St Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston I've been there 26 years for the first 12 years I worked at St Elizabeth's we were operated by the arch diois of Boston and then servers Capital came along steart came along and it's been downhill since there since since then um we have 2800 Massachusetts Nurses Association nurses and health heare professionals working at Stewart hospitals I'm proud and honored to to be representing them today we hope that we can provide a unique perspective on the on this issue because we are the Frontline providers we provide more than 90% of the Care delivered at Stewart hospitals the um the the corporate the corporation and commodification of healthcare is The Guiding ethos of Stewart it's the one and only priority and it has led to horrific suffering and harm to our patients the people who take care of our patients and our communities the immediate and most debilitating ownership um impact of the ownership of Stewart was the um steuart's tendency to understaff units when whenever and wherever they can I spent 20 years working in the emergency department at St Elizabeth's and I can tell you we always struggled to have enough staff enough equipment enough supplies to keep our uh patients safe the um probably one of the biggest impacts is after a patient is um admitted to the hospital they end up sitting in the emergency department for hours just sometimes a couple of days because the units where they should be admitted and safely cared for are not staffed this chronic under staffing has resulted in preventable harm and even death the Boston Globe just ran a front page expose highlighting some of the tragic consequences at steart hospitals this included two patients at Holy Family Hospital and Methuen who died in the emergency department because they weren't immediately assessed and they weren't monitored and that relates directly to severe understaffing of their department at Good Samaritan two patients died after spending hours in a significantly understaffed emergency Department one 81-year-old gentleman came in for chemotherapy for his pancreatic cancer and by the time staff got to him he was dead there were 95 patients in that emergency department on that shift and only 11 nurses it is absurd to think that 11 nurses can care for that for that for that number of patients at another steart hospital sadly enough a 28-year-old gentleman came in he was in an acute Mental Health crisis he was placed in restraints for his own safety and there was nobody available to closely monitor him which is what statute provides for and when he went into distress nobody was there to rescue him and he's dead all of these were preventable we also Al have seen Stuart fail to provide the supplies and the equipment that we need either the supplies don't come through the front door because we're on a credit hold and nobody will bring them to us um also our equipment is it's not properly maintained we have IV pumps and computers with battery lives of 7 to 10 seconds because the maintenance just hasn't been done during my time in the emergency department I I work nights there were nights that we didn't have any Similac or pedite or even diapers I I can think of two separate occasions where staff went out in the middle of the night to a 24-hour store to get those supplies um also we frequently didn't have food kitchen locked up and um I personally have given my my dinner my meal to patients and staff is chipped in and sent out and had food brought in to for patients um sadly enough sometimes babies die new newborn babies die and the practice is to place the baby's remains in um a bement box and take it to the the morg Stewart didn't pay the vendor and they w't any bereavement boxes and nurses were forced to put babies remains in cardboard shipping boxes these nurses put their own money together and went to Amazon and and and brought the bereavement boxes um gosh there's so much more to say I'm the um probably the most tragic and what finally blew the lid off all this was the death of a 39-year-old woman who came to the hospital had an absolutely normal child birth had was was bleeding she um may have been saved by a device known as an embolism coil they weren any in the hospital there hadn't been any in the hospital for weeks they had been repossessed by the vendor she died seart has also caused the closure of quinsey Medical Center I grew up in quinsey this was very close very close to my aunt um and now nooba and Connie Hospital Connie Hospital sees 30 thou more than 30,000 patients a year Boston AMS takes 6,000 patients a year to Connie Hospital where are they going to go we we don't have the capacity in Boston for this I know we have a lot of hospitals we also have a lot of patients the um and just to be clear we we need not to let this happen again and thank you for coming together and it's my sincerest hope that you can put an end to this thank you thank you very much Mr bre by the way if you need more than five minutes that's fine take seven eight minutes if that's what you guys need thank you thank you Senator Sanders and the members of this committee for bringing this in the Forefront my name is audris sprag I'm a registered nurse I worked at nooba Valley Medical Center for 17 years Steward Healthcare systematically extracted every possible dollar that they could get out of our hospital until it led to its closure 12 days ago on August 31st 2024 since St W ownership I've witnessed personally myself uh some firsthand devastating effects of the company's practices of reducing overhead Financial to financially benefit their stakeholders and their CEO with no regards for the patients and the impact on the patients and their care and the family and our staff uh under Steward essential resources began to dwindle repairs that once would have been done immediately were put off and delayed sometimes they weren't addressed at all for example if you have a critically ill patient you need IV access as quickly as you can to give them fluids and medications and um if you can't get it within a very reasonable small amount of time you use what's a mechanical drill called an IO to go through the bone into the bone marrow and but it's mechanically powered so it goes faster and um less trauma and pain for the patient our drill battery died and it's a closed system so the vendor hadn't been paid we couldn't get one from that vendor so they had to Source it from another place we ended up getting this subpar it was like a Fisher Price Toy it felt like it was this mechanical like you had to hand pump it to get this big boore needle to go through the bone into a patient it was technically it worked but it was ridiculously poor quality and it's just a perfect example of steuart only cared about the money and didn't care about what was happening to the patients as beds broke broke they weren't repaired so when our census would increase we would have to rent beds for a long time then all of a sudden we couldn't even rent the beds because we were on credit hold so we were forced to transfer patients to other facilities because we didn't have the physical bed for for them to lay down in an actual hospital bed our hospital bed our hospital is licensed for 57 medical beds plus 20 uh jerryatric psychiatric beds of the 50 7 medical beds by the time we closed we probably had around 18 to 20 working beds so working under these conditions became overwhelming for everybody nurses doctors anybody in the hospital at every different level um due to the chronic underst Staffing and lack of supplies it became our burden to try and make up for the financial like strain that we were under so we would keep that same level of care for the patient whenever we could by hiding the chaos that was going on outside and hiding all of the things that had to be done to get the care for that patient and it was exhausting it's already a very demanding job and they made it almost impossible to do on July 5th 2023 I had to bring my then 18-year-old son into the ER at nooba I knew he would be cared for well I trusted every single person in there but Stuart had made it so there was such low Staffing and didn't care about the constant please for we needed more Staffing on overnights um he was diagnosed with um new onet type 1 diabetes and was in diabetic keto acidosis which is a life-threatening complication of type 1 diabetes he was admitted as an ICU patient into the hospital but there was no ICU beds because there was beds there just wasn't nurses because they hadn't staffed it so he had to stay in the ER that entire night that night there were two nurses staffed in the in the ER despite us constantly saying we needed more and there were 18 patients in the ER are that night so no way in the world could two nurses no matter how fast they were how hard they were no matter what could care for 18 patients in the state of Massachusetts if you're an ICU patient that you should have one to one nursing at times one to two but at a minimum you know it should be one to one on an insulin drip they couldn't the nurses there could not meet all the needs they couldn't get to all the patients so I myself had to take care of my own child titrating the drip making sure that he was getting what he needs on the critical and emergent needs that he had being in um diabetic keto acidosis the lack of overnight Staffing in that ER has been ongoing it was a known patient safety issue despite our local Administration our local hospital CEO CNO acknowledging it and wanting to support it and wanting to fill it corporate no matter what they would just say no in our negotiations that had just ended a few months before on the new contract we wanted a third nurse on nights we asked for it over and over and the corporate um negotiators were like nope you don't need it you can't have it despite everybody saying it was needed you know but to ensure that my son received the critical time sensitive car he needed I had to be his nurse that night and not his mother and he deserved to have both he deserved to have a one-on-one nurse and a mother there to support him and I wasn't able to do that because I was I had to focus on his nursing care and make sure that he was okay Steward's abrupt closure of nishoba with barely 30 days notice has left our region without critical healthcare service services our transport times for ambulances have doubled or tripled our local EMS systems are in no way going to able to consistently meet these needs and there was no time to build up they just said nope we're closing 30 days that's it and we have no public transportation there's not even ride or you know lift Uber anything near us maybe every now and then you can get one but um the closure has resulted in longer waiting times for emergency care for essential screening tests at other hospitals like mammograms oscopies all of those things now other hospitals are going to have to add all of our patients that were getting those services at nooba into these hospitals that they were already overwhelmed especially in the emergency departments at the two closest hospitals to us um moreover noobas closure has left the primary care physicians that are still in place with no place to send them for Diagnostic testings like x-rays CTS ultrasounds MRIs they have to go drive a half hour to get you know any of those services if they can get in for them it's just the steward has a pathological lack of concern for anyone but themselves they do whatever is good for them they repeatedly misrepresented or outright falsified information to the state Regulators intending to downplay the impact of the closure for instance dph inquired about the closure plan um what the transportation options would be in our area uh after the closure so patients could get back and forth to appointments in the response to DP ph's uh question Steward cited a company called here to their transport and said that they are providing 24/7 Transportation the way it was worded was completely meant to imply that this was going to solve the situation here to their transport is one woman named Joanne who and she is lovely like don't get me wrong but she used to provide us with uh vouchers for patients that would need a cab ride home or some sort of Transportation home but she mainly does airport transport so she needs to sleep and she's not 247 she's one person and then she even stopped doing that because Steward wouldn't pay them so she would provide the transport and so it's definitely not a solution for our entire community's you know Healthcare needs um you know they portrayed us as a failing hospital with declining census to justify closure in the state but the narrative conceals that the corporate Executives have systematically deprived our Hospital of essential resources for years including not giving us consistent gastroenterology General surger urologists anesthesiologists and as a result nishoba was forced to transfer our patients and for care that we could no longer provide um the steward's greed has put lives at risks and their action is going to kill people and it's left a complete hole in our community that despite the warnings and pleas nothing's been done to stop them they have unchecked greed across the board and it's not just a business failure it's a human tragedy waiting to happen in our region thank thank you very much Mr uh representative e oh I'm sorry U Miss Mitchell good morning chairman Sanders Senator Cassidy and the other members of The Help committee my name is Stacy Al Britton Mitchell I'm the mayor of the city of westo Louisiana and as Dr Cassidy mentioned I'm also a member of the community Advisory board for Glennwood hospital and I've never expected to be here before in my life testifying before Congress but what my Community has experienced over the last year I think is worth your attention I appreciate this opportunity to testify on the impacts of steart health system has had on our City West Monroe as well as the Northeast Louisiana region city of West Monroe is located in Northeast Louisiana we're home to about 13,000 residents but our eight Parish region has almost 300,000 residents West Monro the home of Glennwood Regional Medical Center it is managed by Stuart Healthcare it serves as one of the Primary Health access points not only for West Monroe wasto Parish the eight other parishes I mentioned as well as it takes transfers from 26 rural hospitals during Steward's management access to Emergency Care became greatly diminished and at times unavailable this created a strain on the other healthc care facilities in our region and when Glennwood was put into immediate Jeopardy status in December of 2023 patients seeking emergency room Services had to be diverted to other other facilities 10 to 20 minutes away on the other side of the was River from West Monroe and the there are reports of these individuals waiting hours upon hours and sometimes days to receive Services even with the Glenwood ER open there kind of became a lack of overall confidence in the care that was provided at Glenwood and some residents chose to seek services in hospitals even further away creating you know more stress on an already stressful situation and of and of course more expense for a you know kind of an impoverished region but this also overwhelmed the other hospitals and while patient care is the priority Glennwood is also an important economic driver it is the largest employer in the city of West Monroe in West wasal parish and before stewards reductions there were over 1,200 employees at Glenwood and today there are approximately 750 I can't overstate to you what a closure of Glenwood would do to these employees and their families those who work maintenance and janitorial and clerical type jobs will be affected the most there's a shortage you know of these jobs in our region and the medical professionals would likely have to go somewhere else they would have to relocate to find employment which would also woron the shortage of professionals and Specialists that we have in our area in addition to the effects on the direct employees Steward is either not paid or they have delayed in paying local vendors last November I was contacted by a local landscaper asking if there was anything that I could do to assist in getting paid he had been you know providing the services but had not been paid in several several months I said send it over let me see what I can do if I can help when I got the invoice I was surprised it was for $72,000 and for a small business with a family Independence and employees that's a lot of money and could put them out of business now I want to be clear that the caring employees of Glenwood they have held that hospital together during challenging times their dedication their commitment to their patients and to our community is to be commended and this situation though it continues to call cause mental and physical stress on them because they don't know if they're going to have a job tomorrow or not or what conditions they're going to have to work under in West Monroe we welcome outside investment we know that good health care is a must for a region to prosper and Steward's effect Steward's management has had a negative effect on our efforts to attract business residents and Industry it is imperative that when individuals or companies invest in critical infrastructure such as health care that they do so in a responsible Manner and they have their patience and the well-being of all in mind and in steuart's case there was a failure to uphold this responsibility and you can see the ramifications easy in West Monroe and in these other communities that have Steward managed hospitals so I thank you for the opportunity to be here I also hope that you will be able to do you know do something will come of this because I want to ensure that nothing like this happens to another Community thank you mayor Mitchell thank you very much representative Eckles thank you Senator Sanders Senator Cy and panel um today is a very important step in holding those accountable in this healthc care delivery system that continue to rob from all of us across America only you at the federal level can make this happen um I'm going to highlight some of the the hearing that we had in Baton Rouge uh after a year and a half of hearing from local Physicians nurses and other providers that there was a problem uh we started to see service lines being cut for delivery in Northeast Louisiana uh from intensive Services Urologic Care um all the way down to basic R Diagnostics uh Physicians called me highly alarmed that they were unable to deliver quality care which they're used to being able to give by the having the resources so after about six months of hearing many of these stories um as a legislator I felt inclined on the Health and Welfare committee that we needed to have a hearing and have a broader discussion with the local management which are essentially Steward hired Executives that they've brought in on April the 9th uh I had a hearing now this is after the facility had been placed in medical Jeopardy numerous times uh numerous conversations with our Louisiana Department of Health at the time Steven Russo was the legal council there working as executive councel in conjunction with all the other leadership at LD uh we summoned the president the interim president and CEO John turton to a a committee meeting along with community members much like you've done from across America today in that hearing uh we heard impact from other Regional hospitals on how they had to pick up the load when steuart and Glenn wood were unable to keep up with the patient volume they cut their their numbers by 2/3 uh they testified to the fact that it was tens of millions of dollars in additional cost that they were not able to recoup uh they even did service lines for Glennwood St Francis Hospital one of the regional hospitals which up until the day of the hearing had not been paid for MRI services that they were helping out this other Regional Hospital uh LDH testified that they didn't have supplies on hand uh and when they came in and put them under medical Jeopardy uh all the way down to basic dollar $2 supplies things that you need for surgical care were not on hand and patients were ended up getting hurt because of that several members of Staff told me about infections that happen with patients and patients dying because of the lack of those supplies all this led up to this hearing where when we deposed uh Mr turton the interim C he admitted on the record that Steward was solely responsible for not providing the financial resources that they needed to provide adequate adequate care to that that hospital he also on the record uh noted that because of their mismanagement they killed and maimed patients when the leader of that that interim leader The stewarded Hired executive admits that on the record we have a substantial problem when I hear my my colleagues from across America here to talk about these deficiencies in the Health Care System it is glowingly clear to me that the executives of steuart Health Group are healthc care terrorists they are killing our patients they are killing our communities and they need to be held accountable I think the problem is broader Senator Sanders you mentioned at the beginning of the hearing that there are other organizations involved medical properties trust coupled with Steward have facilitated a Ponzi like scheme that to me has to be held accountable as well funneling billions of dollars through private Equity into these Healthcare Delivery Systems are creating criminal Enterprises I'm hopeful that this committee after this subpoena of the the CEO who no showed uh can hold him accountable put him in jail because that's where he deserves to be for for stealing this money from all of our communities uh Glennwood and its employees and the people on the ground are terrific people they've done everything in their power to make sure that the patients get everything they can but their hands have been just completely tied um this has created a massive imbalance in our healthc care delivery system in Northeast Louisiana we're trying to keep the pieces together but I do want to make sure and after this panel is over that organizations like medical Property Trust cannot continue to fund other Bad actors who are going to come right after Stewart because this isn't the only the only game in town they they've got people they've worked with for decades that they'll fund they'll come in and have the same mismanagement so I'm hopeful that this committee whether through new laws or through some form of oversight can make sure that that imbalance gets rebalanced and we put logic and reason back in the healthcare delivery system thank you for your time and attention I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you very much representative and thank you for your work and being here today you know Cassidy what comes to my mind above and beyond the discussion we're having Massachusetts is supposedly one of the progressive States Louisiana what the conservative States and we're hearing the same story aren't we we're hearing about decent hardworking health care workers trying to maintain a rotten system based on outrageous greed uh we're hearing communities being impacted whether in Louisiana or Massachusetts um and we're seeing that all over the country uh I want to pick up on uh point that every one of you made and that is the spillover impact that the collapse of a health care facility has on other facilities in the region in Vermont Massachusetts Louisiana we're all stressed in healthcare if a system closes down if a hospital closes down it's not like hey no problem other people will pick it up so maybe just go right down the list um uh mayor do you want to start off What What In Your Community what is the impact on other facilities well definitely the other two facilities in the in washto Parish are overwhelmed uh the ERS are full you know the Beds Are full so not only are the patients having to wait but the employees that work there are stressed they're overwhelmed say a word on that and and maybe somebody else all of you mentioned this in one way or another you have decent people I'm always amazed I got to tell you I have had nurses in tears in my office not worrying about their wages but brokenhearted that they cannot provide the quality of care they have been trained and want to do and what I'm hearing from all four of you is you have great workers stressed out overwhelmed who wants to talk about the impact of what Stewart has done on the employees of the various facilities anyone want to jump in Mr fr hi thank you um talk a little bit closer to the mic yeah the the impact for the healthcare workers nurses doctors everybody is you go there you become for I can speak as a nurse you want to take care of people you want to help people nobody's working this hard in this situation for any other reason and when you have in the emergency department where I worked you have sick critical patients and not enough physical people to take care of them all you have to go to the most emergent situation which means you know that there's some poor little elderly woman in her bed that's in pain that's not getting her pain medication or you know Inc continent needs to be cleaned up and in the back of your head you know that that needs to be done but you can't physically get there and there's not a physical time to do it and that those are the things that keep you up at night the you were you're like oh my God that poor woman like and it wasn't that you didn't want to you just physically could not get to it because of the life-threatening things or the urgent things you have to prioritize and it was everywhere at every level everybody was trying to make up for what Steward wasn't putting in and wasn't investing we had to invest with our own work and so I'm hearing that there has been an enormous emotional toll on people who see suffering who want to address it and are unable to do so yeah yeah not to mention I was some one of you mentioned people actually taking money out of their own Pockets to buy Necessities uh M mcginness did you want to add to that or thank you Senator Sanders I I have spent the past 12 years since we realized it it took us a little bit of time to realize what a bad player Stewart was and I've spent countless hours sitting across the table from Stewart uh at least twice a month at Staffing and Labor Management meetings and saying this is unsafe this is untenable we can't do this I I we represent hundreds of nurses who just sometimes struggle to come into work to put One Foot In Front of another um it's it's just it ruins you a lot of people who used to work full-time 36 hours a week cut down their hours now when people are that stressed they they just they cut down their hours and they they they just don't feel like they can do it anymore it's the the the moral injury that occurs when you're unable to do the one the one and only thing you want to do and that's to keep patients safe and to take care of the best care that you can of a patient of all my patients and but for the greed of steuart in in in the way they deliberately and it almost feels malicious deprive me of my my colleagues my support system my supplies my equipment I'm just one out thank you uh Senator cidy I would refer to Senator Romy oh thank you uh Mr chairman and ranking member Cassidy um uh appreciate the the testimony we've heard and your willingness to to bring this to our attention in a very uh clear and convincing way way um obviously the the events that that took place under uh Mr dore's management at Glennwood and other facilities across the the country including by the way five hospitals in Utah was uh reprehensible and never should have happened um stward was operating in my state from 2017 to 2023 they understaffed healthc care facilities they didn't pay uh for required medical equipment uh they uh failed to meet minimum operating standards they refused to pay a number of vendors to the tune of about $40 million to uh to vendors in in my state uh and most importantly they endangered lives uh and and it's hard to calculate precisely how many lives have been seriously affected or worse as a result of uh of their mismanagement uh and and clearly this kind of um uh un usual setting warrants careful and uh thorough uh Federal review uh HHS at the federal levels responsible for conducting oversight to to combat waste Fraud and Abuse it appears that all three were involved at at Steward and I appreciate chairman Sanders and ranking member Cassidy for bringing the issue before our committee but I I regret we don't have someone here from the administration uh either this Administration or the prior Administration to talk about okay what should HHS be doing how how can we oversee particularly in the case of of hospitals in uh in rural areas that that this doesn't happen uh and and is there something that needs to be done at the federal level to to make sure that that levels of care are being provided um is there something done at the state level I'll turn to you representative which is what what is what happens at the state level is there some State oversight where State Regulators uh uh lacks in this regard we I I don't know to what degree the federal Regulators uh should have been taking more aggressive action or whether they had the the authorities necessary to do that but from your perspective is there something that the state can do or should do or did not do that would have prevented uh either the the tragedies in your state or perhaps in other states like mine that have been so Gravely affected as well so at the time and thank you for the question Senator um the under secretary the Secretary of LDH started investigating in November of 2023 which led us up to the hearing in Spring of 2024 they do have through the medical Jeopardy process the ability to suspend or terminate the license for the facility and that's the path we were headed down with this particular situation uh some states are more aggressive than others I mean when you look at shutting down a hospital and the potentially hurting more people because of that this is how both private equity and these facilities get away from get away with these schemes because they put your facility in Jeopardy they shut them down your community has nothing so they suffer even more so then they can come to politicians like you and me and ask for additional bailout money and other lifelines which to me is part of the broader crime so to answer your question yes there are Pathways for our Departments of Health to hold them accountable but the question is is the pain worth more than the punishment and and do you believe that additional Federal oversight uh is important or necessary in this regard so I think more broadly um when you look at how these schemes are funded they come through and Senator Sanders mentioned medical properties trust when they're fueling this private Equity movement to be able to fund these schemes then yes there's there's Federal oversight and it starts with the SEC I'm shocked that a real estate investment trust can have such large ownership of a facil or a a company like Steward um that's not how reats function federal laws should prohibit those things so there's a broader conversation on how you you fund it and then there's a I guess a maybe a a less broad conversation around specifically with the Department of Health and hospitals on regulatory environments that disallowed these types of operations to exist thank you Mr chairman thank you uh Senator Mary thank you Mr chairman very much um behind me are pictures from the patients who died at stuid hospitals in Massachusetts when stward directed Millions tens of millions hundreds of millions of dollars away from paying their bills and into the pockets of corporate Executives Ralph Dori Cerberus medical properties trust were just sucking out tens hundreds of millions of dollars for their own benefit and leaving these hospitals without the resources which they need in dirty icus patients were bleeding out they're dying in a hallway sonita Teresa jilberto David paty Michael they were amongst the patients that our nurses we're just referring to and God knows how many others whose names we don't even know um we know that more than 2,000 patients were endangered by Steward Healthcare according to to the Boston Globe Spotlight team they were grandparents parents children Aunts Uncles nephews nieces friends community members but for those corporations private Equity those profits came first meaning the patients came lost and ultimately just left it to the nurses to try to deal with this situation as it unfolded um and this this was a situation where every patient meant something special to the families and to the nurses as they tried to help M mcginness you saw the faces of these patients can you can you talk about can you talk about these people and their families and what the impact on them was so so patients die and patients become less well sometimes when they empty the when when when they enter the hospital and it it's inevitable and it's that's life when a patient becomes less well or they die because the resources that they need were unavailable that's greed and when I think back over the years of the patients I was unable to care for in the emergency department because one of the um the uh the Cardinal rules it's Ste it is you can never decline aain transfer you might not have a Hos a bed in the hospital you might have a 28 bed emergency department with five nurses and 35 patients and when you get that call that a critically old patient is coming and you say I I can't I can't possibly prepare for a care for that patient the nursing supervisor says well I'm not allowed to say no so neither are you and then you get that patient and it's a gut Punch To Know that you won't be able to do for that patient what you know that patient needs time and time again my organization I personally I've been to Beacon Hill I've I've I've talked with people from dph eohhs we've reported power outages and um and other failures uh they closed the ICU at um sta Clos the ICU midco at nooba Valley and when the m&a reported them for closing it the dph called called corpit and corporate said oh no no no no no r i was open not to worry even though it was dark and in in there and there were no patients and there were wires hanging out of the the wall from where the equipment had been admitted had had had been removed and when the m& called dph and said well what did you find they said No it's it's open Stewart said it's open so then pictures were sent to dph and said this is clearly a closed unit and dph did nothing dph is a toothless tiger and that's why we need this to be fixed at the federal level every single entity that was closed in Massachusetts by Stewart was deemed an essential service and dph said no no no no no no it's essential you can't close that and then they closed it anyway and there are no ramifications nothing happens what would you have done with the $800 million that Cerberus took out of the system what would you have done with the 40 million do that Ralph dtor used to buy his own private yacht what could you have done with those revenues we we could have had beds that work I mean in in my I work on the 10th floor of a building there there is supposed to be six elev is one of them is working a single elevator is is working they gave us these sleds so we're supposed to do a lateral transfer if there's a fire in the building you go to the next building and they gave us these sleds to drag patients who can't walk I'm 65 years old do you think for one minute I can haul a patient on a flight of stairs on a sled this is lunacy six elevators and only one of the and even that one works most most of the time so yes if we had that money we'd have a a facility that's clean and where things function we we'd have beds for patients we'd have stretchers we'd have food St diapers staff the most all roads lead to Staffing if we had enough staff we could make do with missing some other things but for every person you take away from the bedside you increase the risk to the patient patient who's left left without Care thank you for being here today you are brave and Dr Dori is a coward uh he would not come here to allow you to confront him with the reality of what he has left as his legacy at these hospitals thank you sen Mary uh thank you Senator Cassidy I would refer to Senator BR thank you Mr chairman and U Senator Cassidy this is just another egregious example of a broken Health Care system when you can have a story like this I just spent time with someone yesterday and this was on an Arisa plan I think the claim was about 4.2 million that the company had to end up paying the provider 875,000 bucks and then the insurance companies and another middleman in it got nearly $3 million in the owner Risa plan had to end up paying that bill didn't have enough transparency to actually make a decision that would have prevented it in the first place and you know who was suing the provider that only got 875,000 bucks in the insurance companies other middleman got over 3 million that should never be happening in a system I fought it my entire career as a someone wanting to offer great health insurance took it on back 16 years ago proudest thing that I did was created healthc care consumers out of my employees I didn't think that was reasonable to have your bill your health insurance go up 5 to 10% each year and be told you're lucky uh this is part of a broken Health Care system that even doctors and nurses and independent pharmacists don't want to get into anymore because it's been taken over when private Equity gets into emergency rooms and gets into something that's because it's easy cash flow that's okay if you want to do it on something that isn't critical if the marketplace allows it here it ends up in a story like this it ends up to where we're paying twice as much as most other countries are for health care and in many cases we have poor results I give you that description of another aspect of the system that I just described look at how many resources are being wasted and then you look at this egregious example something's got to give Senator Sanders and I have put out a template based upon competition and transparency getting rid of the barriers to entry it would be a far bigger reform of a broken industry than what government has attempted to do in the past p and I think it ought to put the industry on notice from insurance companies to hospitals to the whole gamut the only ones not liking the system or the practitioners that live within it and they're not happy about how it's evolved is we got to do something to fix it from the ground up or we're going to hear more of these tragic stories um I got a question here um I'm going to ask it um let me get to it here it'll be for uh mayor Mitchell told you about the bill we've got uh it's going to create strong transparency it's going to engender competition it's going to try to chip away at this story and others and there are so many of them that make you sick I'm wondering if greater transparency uh would have been helpful in the fiscal condition of Glennwood Regional uh if there was more information for people to see out there uh do you think um it would have uh made it an easier navigation in terms of what you had to go through yes I I think so and thank you for the question even as a board member I mean we didn't know it it was always presented that Glennwood was profitable it was actually one of the most profitable Hospital in the steward system um we didn't even know and there were rumors kind of entailing maybe a summer late summer of 2023 about some local vendors not being paid or being slow to be paid but it really was not until September and October when it you know the realization of the seriousness of the issue came about and then all of a sudden I mean we were in immediate je immediate Jeopardy in December and at that point there was I you know not a whole lot that that could be done on on the local end of it um I've been mayor six years this is by far the number one topic that I get calls comments text people I don't know stop me in the grocery store asking please do something about this and it just all came to head kind of just all of a sudden so transparency would definitely I think help the situation I think can tell healthc care consumers who have atrophied within a broken system that many times are fearful that their own insurance plan is going to be there for them after they get the bill four to five months later it's all got to change and it's not involved with a engaged skin in the- game consumer in a system that if they want to call themselves free enterprise has to start responding otherwise you're going to see this egregious issue many others like I described and then yes A system that could still be repaired will have to be run like every other country does do it industry wake up thank you thank you thank you uh very much uh Senator Hassen thank you Mr chair and ranking member Cassidy for holding this hearing um before we begin it's absolutely unacceptable that Dr delor has defied a subpoena from this committee and isn't at today's hearing the American people deserve to hear answers directly from him on the horrific mismanagement of Steward Healthcare uh Miss sprag and and to all the witnesses thank you for being here uh to our nurses in particular thank you for what you have done throughout your professional careers um nurses keep our healthare system going and they save patients every day um and they Comfort patients every day uh and we are very very grateful to you um Miss brag I want to discuss your experience at nooba Valley Medical Center which is located in Massachusetts just about 10 miles from the New Hampshire border um and Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nasha about 18 mil away is uh likely to be one of the health care facilities that now has to absorb the impact of the closing at nooba Valley um when nooba Valley Medical Center announced abruptly at the end of July that it would be closing in August leaving just a month for patients and staff to prepare for this massive change in their Community um I am curious about what patients and staff at nishoba were told in the weeks leading up to that closure from Steward corporate very little we got the Warren notice that was sent to the m&a that wasn't sent directly to each of the employees because they don't have to if you're a part of the Union um so that's how the notification came of the closure to begin with uh we that was on uh July 26th on August 2nd so 5 days later we got well five business days so a full week later we got the first email from corporate Octavia Diaz that said you know pretty much I'm sorry like you know we tried but we're going to close anyways it's not our fault nobody bid which everything was done in complete secrecy they kept saying no viable bids no but nobody knows what that means or what that entails um and they just closed there was we had a town hall meeting which is like a we did it by phone with our CEO but even they weren't given a ton of information from corporate and that's it we never had another interaction from corporate to all of the employees yeah like that was sent to us everything's closed now some of the doctors have left like the Specialists the endocrinologists have left I know about it because I work in the hospital I know like what's going on as being part of one of the co-chairs of the Union but I have never gotten a letter from the hospital saying that there's no longer a diabetes and endocrine Center so a lot of people don't know you know and I know that there's nothing in check for them and how they got here I don't understand because if I don't do my job there is a very strict system that will pluck me out of practice to keep patients safe so how private Equity comes in and just can do all of this to all of these people with no systems in place it it it's crazy to me right because patients are going to have to travel farther to receive care in our region um it puts a massive strain on nearby hospitals and local EMS including as I pointed out in my state um can you speak just briefly I want to ask you two things talk to me about the impact that you have seen or you're hearing from your colleagues in the nursing profession on other hospitals in the region as they have to work to absorb hundreds of patients from cha and then also I understand that you all tried to push back and protest the closing and I'm curious about how Steward responded to that Stuart had no response to it at all we never heard anything from them they just went on with their day and because I don't think that they care at all it was of no consequence to them of what they were doing to every employee and every person that gets Care at our facility how it was at every level going to affect them and people had no Transportation no way to get there they had no knowledge of it and I guess there's some helpline that's set up for I don't know a few hours a day but I'm sure it's wholly inadequate if if steuart is in charge of of setting it up and they just had no help and no time because they wanted to get it done in 30 days because then less debt less money that they have to spend to keep this Hospital open so there was no time to increase the Staffing for all the EMS all the towns most of them have one or two ambulances aren't staffed now their transport time or double triple to get someplace they're out of service much longer meaning that there's not another ambulance crew available for the people in that town and most of them are also the firefighters so now you don't have firefighters in town for that and the other hospitals around are having to absorb the patients and then as the employees who have lost our jobs now we have to go work in that setting where they're overwhelmed because how far can we go we're not going to drive right hours and hours to go where these hospitals aren't affected so now I have to go work in an emergency department if I want to stay in the r nurse which I do that's more overwhelmed than it was before and so it's just so multi-layered that and it's things you don't even think of you're like oh my gosh even a month later I'm like I didn't even think of that like you know and they don't care that nobody in our area 16 communities that are service they have literally nowhere to go and it will cost lives and they know the state and they know it's wrong and they know that steuart lied about every sing every always and they still got to just do whatever they wanted I don't understand it well thank you um I'm overtime um I want to just comment to miss mcginness um I had a question about how things have changed at St Elizabeth and you've already answered that multiple times but Mr chair as somebody uh with family in the Boston area I just want to say that St Elizabeth used to have a reputation as being a wonderful wonderful Hospital especially for U mom and babies and to hear your stories um shakes me to my core and I thank you for being willing uh to share it I thank all of the panelists for being able to as Senator Mary pointed out be brave enough to be here today when the person who should be here today is not thank you thank you Senator thank you Senator Hassen Senator Cassidy hey mayor Mitchell and representative Eckles I want to um enter into a conversation with you mayor Mitchell you were on the community board did they ever show show your financials financials were passed out each month um I'm not an expert in healthcare Finance but they were passed out every month and it did show um that the hospital was profitable now was it profitable on a on a marginal was it profitable like my gosh you got some operating Capital here it was I think more um marginal okay now I'm I'm struck and this may be for Mr EOL but but we're hearing that that they never went on divert in Massachusetts that they would accept the patient for transfer even if they didn't have a bed that's correct yes but it took our health and hospitals to make them limit their now I'm a physician I know that's because you didn't have Staffing if you don't have Staffing but you're still taking patience then you're putting the patient in danger I'm just going to say that did they ever discuss why they would not limit their number of beds without the state making them do so because presumably Staffing had become an issue uh and that's why the the state limited it when I first called LDH which would have been probably late October dece or November telling them we need help I was told it was a Private Industry Private Business free enterprise and until certain types of complaints were made that there really wasn't a lot that could be done um an extremely helpless situation knowing that you know things were not great in the hospital and it took I think a different type of complaint I think a patient or maybe a physician made a complaint to LDH and it took that to get LDH to send surveyors to Glenwood to assess the situation and the specific complaint was about Staffing ratios regarding the paity of equipment tell me I think it was more about the lack of supplies lack of supplies now um representative Eckles uh one of the things I'm interested in is a lease Arrangement between medical properties trust and the hospital um and I think you've reviewed some legal proceedings which have taken that which would otherwise be proprietary and has now become public uh what were their Market rates being paid for the lease or were there above Market rates can you give us a sense because I'm trying to where is the hole in the bottom of the bucket they're making money even on the margin and yet there's some hole where the money's dripping out I think it all starts at the top so as I understand it and was reported by the Department of Health that the lease between Steward and medical Property Trust was equivalent to $10 million a year so a property like Glennwood $10 million a year is an enormous amount of money but is that market rate or is that above market rate it's above market rate and do you have any sense is it marginally above 10x above you see what I'm saying I think it's uh at least 2x 2X and that's on the high end $5 million a year would be a high lease for that type of property with the Deferred maintenance and other issues uh Steward which is of course responsible when a re owns an asset the lessor whoever's leasing the building would typically be in charge of making improvements to phys physical plant they have to keep that for their SEC rules so in this case they should have been investing back in the hospital there's tens of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance in that facility let me stop you for a second because in our investigation it looks like MPT has for Bor for steart in general has through forbearance of loans or just cash returned about $200 million to the system I'm trying to be impartial here I'm trying to figure out what's actually going on so you could argue that they were putting the money back in the system to try and Float the boat um but mayor Mitchell was there any could you see from the community board or representative Eckles from your investigation that any of this money was put back into that deferred maintenance Etc no you could walk in the medical mall or the hospital now and there'll be buckets especially with the rain that's come through the last couple of days there'll be buckets in the hallway catching water because of the leaks I was in the medical mall last week and you had to walk around things like to get to the facility where I needed to get a test and and Steward Executives uh required employees pts doctors nurses to go around and clean up the hospital physically clean up sweep mop uh to try to prepare for this next round of uh liquidation I guess as they're bringing in suitors to try to take over this lease so let me stop you because I just seconds left you got you got time you know I keep on hearing corporate corporate corporate am am I Gathering that local decision making man that that um you couldn't say by the way that we need another coil to embolize a bleeding adenoma in the liver uh you had to go to corporate to get them to pay for that so mayor Mitchell again you're on the community Advisory Board is our impression correct that local decisions had to be made corporately yes and so many of the different departments got moved out of the hospital so it was even harder to get a decision or to get a response or to get anything done and what was the means of communication was it um a kind of formal discussion listen here's our to-do list and here's our needs list or was it more ad hoc it was really more ad hoc I mean the community Advisory Board I mean we we were not in the day-to-day operations obviously we're not in those decisions it was more of a here's what's going on in the hospital uh type situation well I'm going to uh the chairman is G generously allowed me to go a little bit over but before I end I want to thank the nurses I used to work in a hospital which was publicly run and always at the end of the fiscal year we didn't have money for things but it was the committed staff that made it work and uh I just like my heart's beating with yours on everything you've done uh so thank you all thank you all thank you uh Senator Cassidy uh Senator hickin NOA thank you Mr chair first Do no harm that's a connected to the hypocritic oath um and Dr deat to went to medical school became a doctor um I mean it raises the question how can he be okay with the business decisions he made and how can he stand behind them uh thousands of workers laid off uh because of Dr de la tor's shoddy business practices and mismanagement of steuart Health's Hospital hospitals and and closures uh four hospitals in Massachusetts alone laying off 2500 employees and at a time when we're so worried about healthc care employees you know we're somewhere in the vicinity as as as many as 6.5 million uh could leave the profession by 2026 by the end of 2026 and we have in the best most optimistic pipeline a couple million to replace them uh and I think that grow mismanagement is not only impacting current workers lives but it's also affecting future potential workers young people that would be considered going into this um so miss mcginness and and miss sprag you know how do we go about battling back how do we reinstitute the efforts to inspire high school students who uh might be interested in science or open to Medicine uh to get them to uh go into Health Care even in what appears to be such an unstable environment and in within Massachusetts obviously it's going to be a distraction and a deterrent for young people to get into Healthcare I'd like to respond if I may we need legislation we need safe patient Staffing legislation we need safe patient handling legislation so the equipment is always available to move patients around and we need safe environment legislation that would make it a crime to harm a medical worker I work 20 years in the ER I I I have lost count of the number of times I've been assaulted absolutely we just don't have access to Safe patient to lifting equipment and anytime you take a nurse takes care of more than four patients on a med surge unit the odd the odds of one of those patients dying increases by 7% we cannot keep doing this five and six and seven patients you cannot give good care all all the all the scientific evidence is for patients is doable as long as we're bringing new nurses into this environment and OTS and PTs and we're making them care for too many patients that they're going to turn around and they're going to leave nobody's going to stay and and work in this environment the Commonwealth of Massachusetts we have 20,000 more nurses now than we did at the beginning of covid just to be clear there is no nursing shortage in the Commonwealth in Massachusetts there is a shortage of nurses who want who want to work in unsafe situations I agree 100% with what she's saying and you know we can't to have health care in hospitals before profit means that nurses aren't a billable service so if you're trying to make a profit the same amount of work has to be done at the end of the day whether there's one nurse to do it or 10 nurses to do it so there's no incentive for a for-profit company that's looking to get every dime out of the hospital and the all the services to add more nurses they don't care how your day is they're not there to actually help patients they're there to make money so until it's not for profit and it's actually for the patients then they will put more nurses on because it's not you know wherever the funding comes from to help the hospital so that they can provide the correct amount of staff because no for-profit company is going to do it out of their own Pockets obviously because they want the profits for them it's just they've lost sight of what it's for we're not a company that's putting handles on buckets like it's people and it's it matters it's their lives it's your family my family and any of the people that are actually owning these companies they'll never be in that situation because they're going to go to the VIP section they're going to be oh this is the CEO of whatever blah blah blah they're going to be taken to the best room they're going to be taken quickly out of so they'll never know what it's really like where the rest of the people that are they're in their hospitals are the ones suffering from their choices I'm out of time but it it it's compelling I mean obviously something's got to give well thank you for your questioning Senator hiop and I think what you the issue that you raised is if you're a young person interested in going into Healthcare do you want to walk into a disaster like that at a time when we desperately need young people to do it that's it's a very important point the other point that I would pick up on is what Senator Rod made a moment ago that in the midst of everything that we're talking about today please don't forget we are spending twice as much as what other countries spend per capita over $113,000 for every man woman and child in America and this is what we are get Senator Murphy thank you very much Mr chairman thank you all for being here this is a very important hearing it's important because well we are focused on this particular company and this set of horror stories what is happening in your hospitals is happening all across the country I wish there this were not true but there are hundreds of Ralph dores who are making a disgusting Fortune off of withholding Health Care from people in need so I just want to tell you a quick story about what's going on in Connecticut um in 2016 a company called Prospect medical Holdings that is owned by a private Equity Company Leonard green and Partners bought three hospitals in Connecticut three small hospitals man Chester Hospital Waterbury Hospital Rockville Hospital you know exactly what happened immediately they started stripping Services out of these hospitals same story you're telling all of a sudden supplies started running short all of a sudden Specialists couldn't be found because they were cutting them off of the roles the elevators stopped working in these hospitals just like they did in your hospitals by 2018 these hospitals were in trouble everybody knew it Prospect was looking for a new buyer to just flip the hospitals to make more money in that year in 2018 lonard green took $658 million in fees and dividends as these three hospitals in Connecticut were essentially dying in front of our eyes patient quality was being compromised John danl is the managing partner of Leonard green there's a lot of various reports about how much he's worth but likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars how have we let American capitalism get so off the rails so unmowed from the Comm good that anybody thinks it's okay to make a billion dollars off of degrading health care for poor people in Waterberry Connecticut a how do you live yourself live with yourself but B why do we accept that as a country this is just a choice to decide to commoditize our Health Care system in Connecticut in Louisiana in Massachusetts in every state across this country and we have enough data at this point to know quality is worse often way worse yes when these private Equity companies come in and not just in hospitals in nursing homes the death rate in nursing homes owned by private Equity companies is 10% higher than in those not owned by private Equity com homes private Equity firms so there's no mysteries of what's going on here um Miss mcginness I want to just ask you a simple question youve you talked about this before but I mean let's acknowledge that every hospital has to make money right you have to make money in order to operate so nobody begrudges a hospital for making decisions that allow it to make more money than it puts out the question is this are you making money for the purpose of providing good health care or are you making money for the purpose of making the owners fil y rich and every decision that happens in a hospital is different if you are making money to provide good health care versus making money to make the owners Filthy Rich you were there before and after yes I was so just in the remaining minute tell us a little bit about what it was like on the ground floor before this company comes in right and then after the company comes in Can you feel it as an employee the the difference in the value system of the owners yes it's noticeably different I um used to work on a on an interim coronary care unit and we gave the best care it was we took care of some of the sickest patients outside the E the ICU and we and we gave the best care we had a 1 to three a 1 to four ratio I never ever ever in the two and a half years that that I worked on that floor we never had a Cod and that's because we were able to rescue our patients we had enough eyes enough hands a good assessments good monitoring enough enough nurses around frankly because the focus was providing yes and when things got tight what katas Christi did is they let go assistant nurse managers and then they let go other people they the very last thing that they did and they actually never did was get rid of Staff nurses get rid of bedside nurses they kept us well staffed and we took the best care of our patients I was so proud to work at St Elizabeth's and after Stewart took over it's just acts and acts and and just taking away everything violating agreements that they made with us they laid off all the nursing assistance on our maternity floors imagine running a maternity floor with no well I can tell you as a nurse it's it's an absurd process ECT they they lay off our Educators they they just they now they're cutting right where for for for um for patient facing staff whereas kentas Christie absolutely prioritized that to the point where they stopped funding our retirement plan they took away a lot of other things before they took anything away from our patients because the purpose is now Mak as much money to make the owners Filthy Rich right and it's just when when you're when there is a fundamental difference in the purpose there is a fundamental difference in what happens inside that hospital and that's just the reality yes thank you absolutely thank you Senator Murphy Senator codyy did you wanna uh I think we have come to the end did you want to have unanimous consent yes thank you I ask unanimous consent I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the letter we received from Dr D Tor and uh uh and the committee's response to that letter without objection let me very sincerely want to thank all four of our Witnesses thank you for what you have done for your hospitals and your communities and thank you for telling the American people uh what has been going on with steart Healthcare and our pledge to you and I think I speak for Senator Cassidy is well we are going to pursue this this is not the last uh discussion of this and if uh Dr delator thinks uh that uh he is comfortable by not being here today Dr delori if you're watching you're wrong this will be pursued uh with that uh let me uh thank everybody for participating uh I once again note that Dr Ralph delatori CEO Steward Healthcare did not comply with the health committee subpoena and attend the hearing today I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a statement from Senator C uh Casey and from stakeholders and supported the committee investigating this matter for any Senators wish to ask additional questions questions for the record will be do in 10 business days September 26 by 5: PM uh this committee stands adjourned good hear