Gov. Healey today announced the state has taken control of St. Elizabeth's Medical in Brighton by eminent domain from its current private-equity owner to keep it open, rather than letting it simply fade away like Carney Hospital in Dorchester. Read more.
Gov. Healey said today she has ordered St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton seized so that the state can keep it open while it transitions to a less rapacious owner - the non-profit Boston Medical Center - rather than risking the collapse of any deal by its current for-profit owners to squeeze the last bits of cash they can as they go bankrupt. Read more.
State House News Service reports the owner of St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton and Carney Hospital in Dorchester has filed for Chap. 11 bankruptcy, which is the kind where they get to keep operating as they try to shake off most of their debts and emerge all shiny and new and healthy so they can dump more money into the pockets of the sort of avaricious vulture capitalists that got them into trouble in the first place. Oh, dear, was that going too far?
The American Prospect reports, in hindsight, it should have been easy to figure out how Steward Health Care would begin circling the drain more than a decade ago. Key point:
For ten years, the hospital chain, which originated as an agglomeration of nun-operated Boston-area neighborhood hospitals known as Caritas Christi, was owned by the private equity firm Cerberus, which extracted more than $800 million in excess of its investment out of the hospitals, then left during the pandemic.
The Globe reports the financial crisis at the company that owns St. Elizabeth's - and Carney Hospital in Dorchester - can have direct patient impact, like when a woman is bleeding internally but the hospital no longer had the embolization coils that might have stopped the bleeding because it couldn't pay for them, and she has to be transferred across the city to another hospital, but by then it's too late and she dies.
A Cincinnati staffing agency that provides temp nurses to hospitals has sued Steward Health Care Systems, which operates St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton and Carney Hospital in Dorchester, for the money it says the hospital system stopped paying for all of the health-care professionals funneled to Steward hospitals following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
Angry Wang customers demand to be let back in. Photo by Live Boston.
So far tonight, burst pipes caused by the sudden freeze have forced three hospitals to send patients elsewhere, left Wang Theatre patrons out in the cold, angrily yelling to be let back in, and flooded a floor at the Prudential Center mall. Read more.
On the Cambridge Street side of the hospital around 6:20 a.m.. WBZ Newsradio reports the woman died. WFXT reports the driver stayed at the scene.
St. Elizabeth's plans to build a six-level, 610-space parking garage on its Brighton campus off Washington Street. Read more.
A medical secretary at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center and five accomplices were indicted on drug trafficking charges today for allegedly using forms stolen from the hospital to obtain Oxycodone at area pharmacies, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports - and adds they were caught when they tried to refill some of the prescriptions. Read more.
Rendering of restored church and monastery at St. Gabriel's site
The BPDA board yesterday approved a 660-unit "mid-market" development on the old St. Gabriel's site off Washington Street and behind St. Elizabeth Medical Center, in a move that could also lead to the creation of a new, privately funded Allston/Brighton bus line. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a nearly $3-million wrongful-death against Dr. Ivan Liang, who gave a 23-year-old man with a sort throat, a cough and pain on breathing a pain reliever and then sent him home - where he was found dead the next day of viral myocarditis.
In its ruling, the state's highest court also ruled it's one thing for hypochondriacs to use Google searches on their symptoms to confirm their worst fears. It's quite another for lawyers to use the results of these searches to question doctors in medical-malpractice suits, the court said.
WBZ reports on the fatal collision between a truck backing up and a pedestrian around 1:30 p.m. at the Brighton hospital.
St. E's recently gave my wife mediocre care in their ER, then withheld her test results from her primary care physician for nine days, then lied, evaded and falsely blamed my wife's PCP when I wrote to them and complained.
Here is the first complaint I sent them, in which I made it clear that all I wanted them to do was admit that they screwed up and explain what they were going to do to prevent similar screwups in the future. Also, in that letter I suggested this change to their billboard:
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