Steward Health Care System

Steward Health Care

Industry	Healthcare
Predecessor	Steward Health Care System
Founded	2010
Founder	Cerberus Capital Management
Headquarters	Richardson, Texas (2018), US
Area served	New England, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, Utah and Malta.
Key people	Ralph de la Torre, MD CEO/President
Revenue	~$8 Billion
Owner	Cerberus Capital Management
Number of employees	>40,000
Website	www.steward.org
Footnotes / references [1][2]

Steward Health Care is the largest private hospital operator in the United States.^[1] The company was established when the Caritas Christi Health Care system was sold to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in 2010; Cerberus converted Caritas to a for-profit company and renamed it Steward Health Care System.^[3] Steward Health Care has 37,000 employees, over 5,000 hospital beds across 36 hospitals, and serves more than 10 states.^[3] Steward Health Care is led by CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD,^[4] and located in Boston. The System is still owned by Cerberus Capital Management.^[4]

History

In September 2016, The Boston Globe reported Steward Health Care System had made a deal to expand its operations. Steward lined up $1.25 billion from a real estate investment firm that will help the Boston-based company finance a national expansion, pay off debt, and return money to the private equity firm that bought it almost six years ago. Steward said Medical Properties Trust. would buy all of its hospital properties for $1.2 billion and pay $50 million for a 5 percent equity stake in the company. Steward will lease the properties from MPT, based in Birmingham, Alabama. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of the year.

In May 2017, Steward announced a proposed merger with Iasis Healthcare, headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, making the private for-profit hospital operator the largest in the United States. The merger will make Steward the parent organization to 36 hospitals across 10 states, with revenues of nearly $8 billion.^[5] The deal would need regulatory approval.

In October 2017, Steward completed its acquisition of 18 Iasis Healthcare hospitals in a deal that was reportedly for $2 billion.^[1]

In February 2018, Steward announced that its top management will relocate to Dallas, Texas from Boston.^[2]

Business model

The System's business model is based on being a low-price leader in the provision of high quality care.^[4] Consistent with this model, the System has taken steps to reduce the direction of surgical patients toward teaching hospitals in the Boston area.^[4] The System has also worked with payers to negotiate patient group-oriented budget pricing.^[4]

Hospitals

Other facilities

Non-acute Steward facilities which offer a variety of services include Steward Home Care and the Steward Medical Group.^[3]

Quincy Medical Center

After years of multimillion-dollar losses and a rapidly declining patient population, Quincy Medical Center closed in December 2014.^[7] In the wake of the hospital’s closure, Steward Health Care announced that it would transition its primary, specialty, and veterans^[8] care to a network of local facilities.^[9] The healthcare company also announced that it would continue to operate its emergency department at the Quincy Medical Center facility,^[10] and that it would provide substantial employee assistance, severance, and job-placement services to Quincy Medical Center staff.^[11]

Steward Health Care’s transition plan has received approval from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and from the Massachusetts Attorney General.^[12]

References

See also

Partners HealthCare

Further reading

Weisman, Robert (August 12, 2011). "Unions, hospitals face off". Boston Globe.