Senators to seek contempt vote after Steward Health Care CEO skips hearing
Lawmakers on Thursday signaled they intend to seek contempt proceedings against the CEO of Steward Health Care after the hospital executive defied a subpoena by not appearing before a bipartisan Senate committee.
Two members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions called for pursuing contempt proceedings against against Steward Health Care CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre.
"A witness cannot disregard and evade a duly authorized subpoena," said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, the ranking member of the Senate HELP committee.
The Senate HELP committee is expected to vote next week on two resolutions: one for civil enforcement and another for certification to the United States Attorney for criminal contempt.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont said the committee won't allow de la Torre to evade the subpoena.
"We are going to pursue this," Sanders said during Thursday's committee meeting. "This is not the last discussion of this."
A spokesperson for de la Torre said it would be "wholly inappropriate" to testify about the hospital chain's finances while bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing and is "prohibited by federal court order" from doing so. In a bipartisan vote in July, a Senate committee authorized the subpoena mandating de la Torre testify on Sept. 12 to discuss the bankrupt hospital chain's financial dealings. Through an attorney last week, de la Torre requested that the hearing be rescheduled until after Steward's bankruptcy proceedings are completed.
The committee invited testimony from nurses at two Massachusetts hospitals and Louisiana elected officials to discuss how Steward's management of hospitals impacted their communities.
Ellen MacInnis, who worked for two decades as an emergency department nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, described how the hospital lacked supplies, equipment and staff under Steward's 14-year ownership.
During some shifts, St. Elizabeth's didn't have Similac, Pedialyte or diapers. Hospital staff had to purchases these supplies at 24-hour retailers.
When infants died in the hospital, a standard practice was to put their remains in a bereavement box to send to the morgue. But she said Steward failed to pay a vendor for these bereavement boxes, so nurses put the babies' remains in cardboard shipping boxes. The nurses pooled their own money to buy bereavement boxes from an Amazon vendor.
MacInnis also described how patients died due to understaffing at other Steward-owned hospitals in Massachusetts. An 81-year-old died while awaiting chemotherapy treatment in a crowded, understaffed hospital, for example.
In another case, a 28-year-old experiencing a mental health crisis was placed in restraints but not closely monitored. When the young man's condition worsened, "nobody was there to rescue him, and he's dead," MacInnis said.
“All of these were preventable,” MacInnis added.
The hospital chain filed for bankruptcy in May and announced it planned to close two hospitals in Massachusetts and sell other facilities. More than 2,200 employees now expect to be laid off in Massachusetts and Ohio, according to notices filed with state regulators.
Steward Health Care was formed in 2010 when the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management acquired a struggling nonprofit hospital chain from the Archdiocese of Boston. De la Torre, a Harvard Medical faculty member who previously led the cardiac surgery unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, became CEO of the new entity, named Steward Health Care.
Louisiana state Rep. Michael Charles Echols testified about patient safety lapses at a Steward-owned hospital in West Monroe, Louisiana. At a state legislative hearing this spring, hospital workers described searching for basic medical supplies during procedures. One patient died at the hospital awaiting transfer to another hospital.
Echols said de la Torre's refusal to testify at the Senate committee hearing demanded action. He wanted the Senate committee to "hold him accountable, put him in jail, because that's where he deserves to be for stealing this money from all of our communities."
If passed by the committee, the criminal contempt resolution would refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena.