Optum Care to buy physician group from troubled Steward Health Care
Steward recklessly took on massive debt, says Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
Photo: Courtesy of UnitedHealth Group
Troubled Steward Health Care in Massachusetts has a deal to sell its physician group to Optum Care, according to a statement from Sen. Edward J. Markey D-Mass.
Steward Health Care – which operates nine health care facilities across Massachusetts – is currently facing significant financial insecurity as a result of previously accumulated debt, Markey said. It was previously owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity company that generated $800 million in profit from Steward.
"After Steward recklessly took on massive debt that is continuing to put hospitals in Massachusetts and across the country into financial crisis, the Massachusetts healthcare system must move away from Steward's financial insecurity," Markey said. "With this announcement, Optum must demonstrate that it can meet the even greater responsibility to preserve and protect healthcare access in the Commonwealth, and I hope they will live up to that responsibility by controlling costs and putting patients and providers first."
A healthcare system that focuses more on profit motive than patient outcomes needs reform, Markey said.
Markey, who is chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security, has invited Steward CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre to testify at a congressional hearing in Boston on April 3.
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org
