Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre will be stepping down after refusing to testify before a U.S. Senate panel on how his health care company went belly up, which earned him a referral to a federal prosecutor for a criminal contempt charge.
A spokesperson for de la Torre told The Associated Press on Saturday that he “has amicably separated from Steward on mutually agreeable terms” and “will continue to be a tireless advocate for the improvement of reimbursement rates for the underprivileged patient population.” His resignation is effective Monday, Oct. 1.
The Dallas-based Steward declared bankruptcy in May, and its 32 hospitals across the nation, which includes eight in Massachusetts, not long thereafter began to shutter in order to pay off its remarkable debt obligations, the Herald has reported.
But they couldn’t always find a buyer. The end of last month saw both Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center close because no bidders stepped forward.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey on Friday announced that her administration had seized control of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton from Steward’s former landlord there, the Wall Street private equity firm Apollo Global. It’s the first part in a plan to turn the hospital over to Boston Medical Center.
Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wagged his finger at a picture of de la Torre’s yacht purported to be worth $40 million and said that Congress “will hold Dr. de la Torre accountable for his greed and for the damage he has caused to hospitals and patients throughout America.”
De la Torre also gets little love from Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who said in a statement following the contempt resolution that “Over the past decade, Steward, led by its founder and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre, and its corporate enablers, looted hospitals across the country for profit, and got rich through their greedy schemes.”
“Hospital systems collapsed, workers struggled to provide care, and patients suffered and died. Dr. de la Torre and his corporate cronies abdicated their responsibility to these communities that they had promised to serve,” Markey said.
As the hospitals spiraled into bankruptcy, de la Torre grew rich, Markey said, buying “fancy cars and private planes and becoming the poster child of callous corporate greed.”
The Associated Press and previously published Herald material contributed to this report.
