The U.S. Senate authorized a decision Wednesday meant to carry Steward Well being Care CEO Ralph de la Torre in prison contempt for failing to testify earlier than a Senate panel.
The senate authorized the measure by unanimous consent.
Members of a Senate committee trying into the chapter of Steward Well being Care adopted the decision final week after de la Torre refused to attend a committee listening to final week regardless of being issued a subpoena. The decision was despatched to the total Senate for consideration.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont unbiased and chair of the Senate Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions Committee, mentioned de la Torre’s choice to defy the subpoena gave the committee little alternative however to hunt contempt costs.
The prison contempt decision refers the matter to the U.S. lawyer for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to adjust to the subpoena.
A consultant for de la Torre didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Sanders mentioned he wished de la Torre to clarify how a minimum of 15 sufferers at hospitals owned by Steward died on account of a scarcity of medical tools or staffing shortages and why a minimum of 2,000 different sufferers had been put in “rapid peril,” in line with federal regulators.
He mentioned the committee additionally wished to know the way de la Torre and the businesses he owned had been in a position to obtain a minimum of $250 million in compensation over the previous for years whereas 1000’s of sufferers and well being care employees suffered and communities had been devastated on account of Steward Well being Care’s monetary mismanagement.
Sen. Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana, the rating Republican on the committee, mentioned communities had been harmed due to the actions of Steward and de la Torre.
“Steward’s mismanagement has nationwide implications affecting affected person care in additional than 30 hospitals throughout eight states together with one in my dwelling state,” he mentioned.
In a letter despatched to the committee forward of final week’s listening to, Alexander Merton, an lawyer for de la Torre, mentioned the committee’s request to have him testify would violate his Fifth Modification rights.
The Structure protects de la Torre from being compelled by the federal government to offer sworn testimony meant to border him “as a prison scapegoat for the systemic failures in Massachusetts’ well being care system,” Merton wrote, including that de la Torre would comply with testify at a later date.
Texas-based Steward, which operates about 30 hospitals nationwide, filed for chapter in Might.
Steward has been working to promote a half-dozen hospitals in Massachusetts. Nevertheless it acquired insufficient bids for 2 different hospitals, Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Middle within the city of Ayer, each of which have closed consequently.
A federal chapter courtroom this month authorized the sale of Steward’s different Massachusetts hospitals.
Steward has additionally shut down pediatric wards in Massachusetts and Louisiana, closed neonatal models in Florida and Texas, and eradicated maternity providers at a hospital in Florida.
Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts mentioned over the previous decade, Steward, led by de la Torre, and its company enablers, “looted hospitals throughout the nation for revenue, and obtained wealthy by their grasping schemes.”
“Hospital techniques collapsed, employees struggled to offer care, and sufferers suffered and died. Dr. de la Torre and his company cronies abdicated their duty to those communities that that they had promised to serve,” he added.
Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Middle in Boston, testified earlier than the committee final week that below Steward administration, sufferers had been subjected to preventable hurt and even loss of life, significantly in understaffed emergency departments.
She mentioned there was a time when Steward did not pay a vendor who equipped bereavement containers for the stays of new child infants who had died and needed to be taken to the morgue.
“Nurses had been compelled to place infants’ stays in cardboard transport containers,” she mentioned. “These nurses put their very own cash collectively and went to Amazon and purchased the bereavement containers.”