Steward boss De la Torre summonsed to US Senate committee investigation

Problems for healthcare provider Steward, whose private venture in Malta is now the subject of criminal fraud charges against government top brass, continue in the United States were senators have opened a bipartisan investigation into the country’s largest physician-led hospital system.

But its principals have reaped extravagant payments even as hospitals struggled to meet their mortgage payments owed to landlords such as Medical Properties Trust, whose business is built on such healthcare tenants.

The US Justice Department also has been probing the company over allegations of fraud.

Steward bosses kicked out of Malta wanted for Senate grilling in US

Senators voted to subpoena the company’s CEO Ralph de la Torre. In Malta investigators recommended charges De la Torre over a massive fraud investigation that has dragged down former prime minister Joseph Muscat, now facing corruption charges.

The US senate committee on health accused Steward’s leaders of “outrageous corporate greed” that harmed access to medical services in America, such as spending nearly $100 million on a pair of private jets. “At a Steward-owned Massachusetts hospital, a woman died after giving birth when doctors realized mid-surgery that the supplies needed to treat her had been repossessed due to Steward’s financial troubles,” said Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a physician. “Patients’ lives are at risk. Americans deserve answers.”

The committee previously sought testimony from De la Torre, but had been rebuffed, prompting Thursday’ vote to subpoena him. His hearing will be on 12 September.

The Senators claimed De la Torre’s decisions resulted in new threats to patient care, rather than improving it.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee, said the system’s leaders spent tens of millions of dollars on luxury purchases – such as de la Torre’s acquisition of a $40 million yacht and a $15 million fishing boat – even as their hospitals struggled to stay afloat.

“It is time for Dr. de la Torre to get off of his yacht, and to explain to Congress the financial chicanery which made him extremely wealthy, while the hospitals he managed went bankrupt,” Sanders said.

Democrats argued that private equity ownership helped fuel Steward’s troubles, after a private equity firm in 2010 bought the then-struggling hospital system, took on new liabilities such as selling the company’s real estate holdings, and then sold Steward back to physicians in 2020, leaving the system burdened with new debts.