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More than 100 gathered Wednesday to hear and offer comment on the sale of Mercy Health Care Partners Northeastern Pennsylvania to a private company.
Matt Hughes/The Times Leader
SCRANTON – The state attorney general heard comment Wednesday from those for and against the sale of three area hospitals to a private corporation.
Mercy Health Partners entered into a purchase agreement in early February with Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, owners of Wyoming Valley Health Care System, for the sale of Mercy Hospital, Scranton; Mercy Tyler Hospital, Tunkhannock; and Mercy Special Care Hospital, Nanticoke. Several medical office buildings, doctors’ practices, clinics and ancillary services are also part of the deal.
Speakers at the three-hour hearing Wednesday fell generally into two camps: doctors and administrators supporting the sale, if cautiously, and nurses and union representatives opposing it.
CHS has promised to hire all employees in good standing at the time the transaction is complete at the same position and pay, and honor seniority and years of service. CHS promised to invest at least $68 million in the first five years after the transaction, to continue all essential services for five years, to donate $2 million to a foundation to promote community health care, and to maintain religious statuary and other symbols. It will also fund the creation of two new community foundations.
Because ownership of the hospitals and charitable assets will be transferred from a nonprofit entity to a publicly traded company, the state attorney general must approve the transaction. The public hearing held Wednesday in the auditorium of the McGowan Conference Center of Mercy Hospital served to allow acting Attorney General William H. Ryan Jr. to collect information to form his decision.
He did not say when a decision would be made.
Mercy Health Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania President and CEO Kevin Cook said the sale was necessitated by economic problems that plagued the hospitals for decades.
“In our best years we would achieve small margins, in our worst years, large losses,” Cook said.
Cook said he is optimistic that the sale will inject needed capital to revitalize Mercy’s aging facilities and to handle staffing shortages.
Dr. Linda Thomas, a physician at Mercy Hospital, Scranton, said controversy surrounding the sale has overshadowed real problems confronting the hospital, and that community opposition to the sale is better directed at making sure CHS lives up to its end of the bargain.
“We’ve got a bunch of good people; we’re all working for a nonprofit, and you know what, we have for-profit behavior, because while we’re scrambling around for resources we can’t serve the community in ways that are necessary for not-for-profit,” she said.
Cook said Mercy chose 14 companies and nonprofit entities as possible buyers, four of which submitted proposals. Three, all for-profit companies, made it to the sales phase. The sale price has not been disclosed publicly.
Physicians and administrators at Mercy and other area hospitals also spoke in favor of the sale, while nurses, unionized hospital employees and union representatives spoke out of what they said is a pattern among CHS-run hospitals of bad-faith bargaining and cutting essential but non-profitable community services, and prioritizing profit over patient care.
Representatives of the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 1000 workers at Mercy Hospital in Scranton, spoke out against the sale, stating that no regulatory body can enforce the promises CHS has made in the sale agreement. They said CHS has closed maternity wards and other services at its hospitals that lost money despite promises not to do so.
SEIU representative Michele McGinn added that CHS has a history of burdening its charitable foundations with “crushing liabilities.”
Unionized nurses from Wilkes-Barre General Hospital spoke about the changes that have taken place at the hospital in Plains Township since CHS took over its operations in 2009.
Alex Rendina, a former nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, said he was unjustly terminated in June 2009 shortly after CHS took over and he was named president of the hospital’s nurses union. Rendina filed a grievance with his union and an arbitrator found in his favor, but CHS has appealed the decision twice.
Rendina called his experience “an attempt to use the judicial process as a means to intimidate.”
Sale of the hospitals now awaits Attorney General (William H.) Ryan’s approval