BOSTON — The US Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday aimed at holding Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre in criminal contempt for failing to testify before a Senate panel.
The Senate approved the measure unanimously.
Members of the Senate committee looking into Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy approved the resolution last week after de la Torre refused to attend a committee hearing last week despite being given a warrant. The resolution was sent to the full Senate for consideration.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said de la Torre’s decision to defy the subpoena gave the committee little choice but to seek contempt charges.
The criminal contempt decision refers the matter to the US attorney for the District of Columbia to prosecute de la Torre criminally for failing to comply with the subpoena.
A representative for de la Torre did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sanders said he wants de la Torre to explain how at least 15 patients at Steward Hospital died because of a lack of medical equipment or staff and why at least 2,000 other patients were placed “in immediate danger,” according to the federal. authorities.
He said the committee also wants to know if de la Torre and the companies he owns were able to get at least $250 million in compensation over the past years while thousands of patients and health workers were suffer and the cities are crushed because of the Steward. Health Care Financial Mismanagement.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the committee, said the public was harmed by the actions of Steward and de la Torre.
“Steward’s mismanagement has ramifications across the country affecting patient care at more than 30 hospitals in eight states, including one in my home state,” he said.
In a letter sent to the committee before last week’s hearing, Alexander Merton, de la Torre’s attorney, said the committee’s request for him to testify would violate his Fifth Amendment rights.
The constitution protects de la Torre from being forced by the state to provide sworn testimony intended to make him “scapegoat for the failings of Massachusetts’ health care system,” Merton wrote, adding that de la Torre will agree to testify. the next day.
Texas-based Steward, which operates about 30 hospitals nationwide, filed for bankruptcy in May.
Steward is working to sell half of the hospitals in Massachusetts. But it received insufficient applications for two other hospitals, Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in the town of Ayer, both of which closed as a result.
A federal bankruptcy court this month approved the sale of Steward’s other Massachusetts hospitals.
Steward also closed nurseries in Massachusetts and Louisiana, closed baby centers in Florida and Texas, and terminated maternity services at a Florida hospital.
Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts said that over the past decade, Steward, led by de la Torre, and its corporate backers, “robbered hospitals across the country for profit, and got rich on the schemes of they are greedy.”
“Hospital systems collapsed, staff struggled to provide care, and patients suffered and died. Dr. de la Torre and his business partners neglected their responsibility to this community they promised to serve,” he added.
Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Boston, testified before the committee last week that under Steward’s administration, patients were at risk of preventable and even death, especially in understaffed emergency departments.
He said there was a time when Steward failed to pay the seller who provided the coffins for the remains of newborn babies who died and had to be taken to the morgue.
“The nurses were forced to put the remains of the babies in cardboard shipping boxes,” he said. “These nurses collected their money and went to Amazon and bought the dead boxes. .”
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