The bankruptcy court hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the sale of up to five Steward Health Care hospitals in Massachusetts has been postponed until Friday.
In a court notice filed overnight, the company announced that the hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday would be “postponed” to 11 a.m. Friday, August 16.
The sale hearing is an important step in the bankrupt company’s efforts to sell its Stewardship Health physician network and hospitals in Massachusetts, Arkansas and Louisiana.
No reason for the postponement was given in the submission.
City councilors have unanimously voted for a resolution declaring a state of emergency to prevent the closure of a Dorchester hospital operated by the controversial Steward Health Care.
Steward has already received court approval to close Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, but company officials told the court that they had “received binding offers from local operators to acquire six (6) of their hospitals in Massachusetts, including Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Saint Anne’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital – Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital – Methuen and Morton Hospital.”
Massachusetts agreed to a deal, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved it. The state will pay $30 million in Medicaid advance payments to keep the Steward hospitals, which are to be sold, open through August. The state was supposed to pay about $11 million of that amount on or around Friday.
But the second round of payments, totaling $19 million, could be affected by the postponement of Tuesday’s hearing. That payment is tied to the “execution of agreements to acquire the hospital operations and land” of the Massachusetts hospitals by Aug. 9 and the “issuance of one or more orders of the bankruptcy court on or before August 15, 2024, authorizing the sale of those hospitals,” according to the agreement.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health did not immediately respond to questions Monday morning about how the postponement of the hearing from Tuesday to Aug. 16 affects the Aug. 15 payment agreement and its terms. A spokeswoman for Steward said the company could not comment on questions from the News Service.
Steward’s overnight court filing also postponed sale hearings for hospitals in Arizona and Florida from August 22 to September 10. A sale hearing for hospitals in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas was postponed to “a date to be determined.”
