The legislation spelled out what’s at stake, saying the funding would help preserve 2,700 jobs in Rhode Island. It said Roger Williams Medical Center provided care for nearly 31,500 emergency room patients, 55,000 inpatient cases, and 84,000 outpatient visits in fiscal year 2024, while Our Lady of Fatima Hospital provided care for nearly 25,500 emergency room patients, 4,857 inpatient cases, and 124,000 outpatient visits.
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House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, a Warwick Democrat, and Senate President Valarie J. Lawson, an East Providence Democrat, issued a joint statement, saying the two hospitals “provide critical health care to our state, and Rhode Island cannot afford a scenario in which they close.”
Rhode Island’s other hospitals would be unable to absorb the 300,000 patients they serve each year, nor their 55,000 emergency department visits, they said.
Shekarchi and Lawson said that with the involvement from the Health Department and Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, the state has imposed “many, many safeguards” on the deal “to ensure the long-term stability of these two hospitals.”
The House and Senate finance committees have worked to ensure “Centurion is prepared to support the hospitals and will work to right the ship after mismanagement by the current owner,” they said.
“While the entire health sector nationally faces many uncertainties in the current environment, this sale, which would return the hospitals to nonprofit status, is the best available path forward for a better future for Fatima and Roger Williams, and for public health in Rhode Island,” Shekarchi and Lawson said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Louis P. DiPalma, a Middletown Democrat, said rather than being “too big to fail,” Rhode Island and its health care system is “too small to let them fail.”
“This is the right thing to do to shore up those hospitals and provide the means for Centurion to take over the hospital,” DiPalma said.
He added that if Centurion defaulted on its loans, the first reserve funds would come from $9 million that the nonprofit is putting up. The state’s $18 million would only be tapped after that $9 million is gone, he said.
Senator Jonathon Acosta, a Central Falls Democrat, said legislators needed to pass the bill to save the hospitals, but he wanted to be sure Rhode Island learns a lesson from all this. “It’s important that we contextualize exactly how we got here so we don’t get here again in 10 to 20 years,” he said.
Acosta said private equity came into Rhode Island nearly 15 years ago seeking to buy the two hospitals. State officials vetted the purchase, but he said, “At the end of the day, it was private interests trying to get into a space that takes public dollars for the provision of help.”
Acosta noted that many of the patients at the two hospitals rely on public funding through Medicaid and Medicare, but he said, “This private company began taking anything from the top that they could take and sending it out of state.”
At the same time, he said, the company used the hospitals and their patients as collateral while borrowing millions and providing millions to shareholders.
“So now they’re bankrupt, and we are faced with the closure of two of our hospitals,” Acosta said. “ Rich people borrow money from other rich people using our public hospitals as collateral, and now need us to bail them out with public money so that we can convert the private hospital back to a nonprofit. That is wild.”
Representative David Morales, a Providence Democrat running for mayor, said he was supporting the bill because tens of thousands of Medicaid and Medicare recipients depend on those hospitals. But he, too, emphasized the importance of recognizing “how we got into this mess in the first place.”
“It is a result of what happens when we have for-profit entities that abuse and exploit our health care system,” he said.
So with $18 million in public funds on the line, Morales said he expects Centurion to pay its frontline health care workers “a livable wage” and maintain “safe staffing” so patients receive the quality of care they deserve.
Representative Charlene M. Lima, a Cranston Democrat, also supported the legislation, and said the state must also look out for the doctors who were promised medical malpractice insurance by Prospect. She warned that the failure to provide that coverage could drive doctors into bankruptcy and exacerbate the shortage of primary care doctors in Rhode Island.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.
