Steward Health, the parent company of West Monroe's Glenwood Regional Medical Center, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing comes after years of liquidly problems at the Dallas, Texas based company.
Monroe Representative Michael Echols blame for the bankruptcy lies with Steward Health management. "It's horribly sad to watch so many people either lose their jobs or patients lose access because of the corporate greed of Steward Health Group."
Currently the hospital is open, and Steward Health says the day-to-day operations are unaffected and business continues as normal at their hospitals. The company says they intend to sell by the end of June. But complicating the issue is that the building and land are owned by Medical Properties Trust. In a cash crunch the land and buildings of many Steward properties were sold to Medical Trust Properties to infuse cash back into Steward.
Echols says once the leaders at Steward are investigated "I think you'll start to see the connections to Medical Properties Trust and that could create an anti-trust or some other potential fraud issue."
Echols says that other local and regional hospitals have reached out about a potential sale of the business. He believes the best-case scenario would be for another nearby hospital to lease the hospital to keep the emergency room open and keep medical specialist in the market.
Neither the City of West Monroe or Hospital Service District #1 own or have any influence on Glenwood but are also actively working to find a potential buyer for the facility.
