Senator says Steward bankruptcy could 'disrupt care for patients,' wants special counsel

As Steward Health Care bankruptcy proceedings continue, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr filed a budget amendment allowing the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to handle the commonwealth's interests in the case.

"There's a bankruptcy proceeding that's going on here — we want the commonwealth to be fully engaged in that, and any dollars that come back to us a result of that engagement, we'd like to place into that fund and allow the fund to be used to mitigate the impacts of the Steward bankruptcy on other health care providers and patients in the commonwealth of Massachusetts," Tarr told reporters during the Senate's dinner break Tuesday, May 21.

"Certainly, it is foreseeable that that bankruptcy is going to disrupt care for patients, and it's going to disrupt the remaining providers that are in the commonwealth."

Steward owns multiple hospitals in Massachusetts, including Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Morton Hospital in Taunton and Saint Anne's Hospital in Fall River.

While the Senate tackled two bundles of amendments Tuesday dealing with health and human services, it did not take up Tarr's proposal during the first day of fiscal 2025 budget deliberations.

The amendment would also create a Healthcare Provider Liability and Patient Protection Fund, seeded with $200,000, for Massachusetts to receive money from fines, penalties, sanctions and recoveries from health care providers tied to "judicial, regulatory, or administrative law proceedings to which the commonwealth or any agency thereof is a party," the amendment states.

The fund would also provide "resources to support patients and mitigate the disruption of care due to the bankruptcy, closure, or other interruption in the provision of care by a provider in the commonwealth."

The fund would be managed by the attorney general, inspector general, and the secretary of health and human services.

"We're filing this because we think it is time for this action to be taken, whether it happens in this budget document or in a successive bill that may be coming, that's yet to be determined," Tarr said. "But we think it's an idea whose time has come."

Senate President Karen Spilka pledged in a TV interview that aired Sunday that the Senate would pursue health care reform legislation in the wake of Steward's financial crisis. The House passed a major hospital oversight and health care reform bill last week.

Tarr said the special counsel outlined in the amendment should be appointed as soon as possible.

"We're not using the term special prosecutor," Tarr said. "It's broader than that, because we think the person or people in that office need to be able to focus on this, given the magnitude that it has and the potential that it has to do serious damage to our health care system if left unchecked."

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Steward Health Care bankruptcy could 'disrupt care for patients'