Health company sues CEO over ‘greed.' How the sale of Miami hospitals is involved
Steward Health Care System is accusing former CEO Dr. Ralph de La Torre and other Steward executives and directors of making business deals that personally benefited them but hurt the company, its hospitals and its patients.
Steward attorneys say 'their greed and bad faith misconduct,' which included de La Torre allegedly using money meant for Steward's operations to buy a $30 million superyacht, a private Texas ranch and other luxury items, 'ultimately led to Steward's collapse' and its bankruptcy last year.
The nearly 70-page lawsuit, filed this week in Texas bankruptcy court, names de la Torre, other Steward executives and board members, and several Steward-related companies, as well as Tenet Healthcare, a company that sold the Miami-area hospitals to Steward.
In a statement to the Miami Herald, a spokesperson for de la Torre denied the accusations.
'Dr. de la Torre disputes the allegations of wrongdoing and will vigorously defend himself against them,' spokesperson Rebecca Kral said.
Attorneys for Steward are asking the court to declare some transactions made between April 2020 and November 2022 as fraudulent and force de la Torre and others to pay back Steward.
One of the disputed transactions is Steward's $1.1 billion purchase of five Miami-area hospitals from Tenet Healthcare in 2021: Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Coral Gables Hospital, Hialeah Hospital, North Shore Medical Center in North Miami-Dade and Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes.
The lawsuit says Steward overpaid for the hospitals, which were initially valued at $895 million, and did not have enough money at the time for the purchase.
The purchase of the South Florida hospitals was 'disastrous' for Steward and was fueled by 'de la Torre's personal desire to build a hospital empire in the Miami area, rather than on any independent financial analysis,' the lawsuit alleges.
Steward's attorneys are now asking the judge to declare the 2021 sale 'fraudulent' because Steward 'did not receive reasonably equivalent value in exchange for making such payment and had unreasonably small capital in relation to its business both before and after making such payment.'
'Not only did [Steward Health Care] overpay, but de la Torre pushed the deal through before Steward could complete the closely-related sale of five Steward hospitals in Utah,' which it needed to buy the Miami hospitals, the suit states.
That Utah hospital deal with HCA Healthcare never went through after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the sale, alleging violations of federal antitrust laws. The Utah hospitals were eventually sold a few years later to another health company for millions less. But because Steward had to pay Tenet for the Miami hospitals before the Utah hospital sales closed, 'Steward was never able to invest in appropriately integrating the Miami Hospitals' and Steward's 'insolvency deepened even further,' according to the lawsuit.
Steward Health was once considered to be the largest physician-owned hospital network in the country, with 31 hospitals. But de la Torre's medical empire has crumbled.
Steward sold its physician group, shuttered some hospitals and sold others, including three Florida Space Coast hospitals, as part of the bankruptcy process. One of the Florida hospitals Steward sold to Orlando Health has since closed.
Some of Steward's other hospitals, including the ones in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, were given to landlord Medical Properties Trust, which helped finance the Tenet deal and owns the land the Miami-area hospitals sit on. Steward made the deal in court last year to get out of its lease with the landlord and to keep hospitals open.
The South Florida hospitals, which languished under Steward's ownership and struggled with supply shortages, unit closures, and payments to employees and vendors, are now operated by Healthcare Systems of America.
This article will be updated.
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