The American Prospect reports, in hindsight, it should have been easy to figure out how Steward Health Care would begin circling the drain more than a decade ago. Key point:
For ten years, the hospital chain, which originated as an agglomeration of nun-operated Boston-area neighborhood hospitals known as Caritas Christi, was owned by the private equity firm Cerberus, which extracted more than $800 million in excess of its investment out of the hospitals, then left during the pandemic.
A Cincinnati staffing agency that provides temp nurses to hospitals has sued Steward Health Care Systems, which operates St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton and Carney Hospital in Dorchester, for the money it says the hospital system stopped paying for all of the health-care professionals funneled to Steward hospitals following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
WBUR reports Mass. General now has five patients with Covid-19 in its ICU and another 70 suspected cases in patients doing well enough to not need intensive care.
The Dorchester Reporter reports Carney Hospital is now banning all visitors - and has shut its Dunkin' Donuts - as it transitions to an all-coronavirus facility.
The Dorchester Reporter reports all its beds will be converted into use for caring for people with Covid-19. The emergency room, however, will remain open for all patients.
The death of Mary Miller, 71, at the hands of her knife-wielding upstairs neighbor was tragic, but not the fault of the hospital that released him from its psychiatric ward three weeks earlier on the recommendation of the man's doctor, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today. Read more.
A grand jury today indicted Ashok Patel, a Hanover doctor with an office on the campus of Dorchester's Carney Hospital on charges he tried to earn extra money by charging patients for addiction drugs even though the state was reimbursing him for them, the state Attorney General's office reports. Read more.
A state law intended to protect residents from having their free speech squashed through lawsuits by large companies can also protect corporate executives who talk to the media when they're under state scrutiny, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled yesterday.
The ruling comes in a defamation lawsuit filed by former nurses at Steward Health Care System's Carney Hospital in Dorchester, who were fired in 2011 after an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of a patient in a hospital ward for teen psychiatric patients. Read more.
An arbitrator says Carney Hospital has to rehire six of the twelve nurses it fired in 2011 in a scandal involving physical and sexual abuse of patients in its adolescent psychiatric unit.
Arbitrator Philip Dunn said that while the hospital proved "a stunning level of dysfunction" in the ward, it was wrong to fire every single worker in an attempt to end a "deviant culture" without at least giving them a chance to prove their innocence.
In response, Carney filed a federal lawsuit yesterday to overturn the ruling.
The Dorchester Reporter reports on the abrupt departure of Bill Walczak, which may not have been voluntary, only 14 months after the longtime Dorchester health activist took the job.
Bill Walczak, currently CEO at the Codman Square Health Center, will become president at Carney Hospital, the health center reports.
Walczak co-founded the health center in 1974. Sandra Cotterell, chief operating officer at Codman, will become the center's CEO.
Chris Lovett details growing opposition in Dorchester to a proposal by Attorney General Martha Coakley to eliminate acute-care medical services at Carney Hospital, as part of an overall plan to stabilize the Caritas hospital system.
Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, proposes that the Service Employees International Union take over troubled Carney Hospital in Dorchester:
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