South Shore Hospital already disrupted by Steward's woes

 




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South Shore Hospital already disrupted by Steward's woes

The rare Congressional hearing held Wednesday at the State House was meant to showcase what happens when the private equity world gets involved in health care. But another example of the real-world impact of the slow-burning Steward Health Care crisis came this week in a more familiar place: a dense financial document.

Steward's Massachusetts hospitals "are in deep financial distress and appear to be in danger of closure because of years of mismanagement, private equity schemes, and executive profiteering," U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren said last month. The for-profit health system's financial woes have created the potential for hundreds of thousands of Bay Staters to face disruption accessing care, and have required state government to plan for various contingencies.

And Steward's problems are already affecting operations at South Shore Hospital, the South Weymouth acute care hospital that has one of the four busiest emergency rooms in the state. The sudden closure of Signature Brockton Hospital (about eight miles away) due to a February 2023 electrical fire and the "ongoing financial instability" of Steward's Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton "materially disrupted" South Shore Hospital, Fitch Ratings said this week.

"Instability in these local hospitals has caused unprecedented volume increases at SSH, particularly in its ED and its obstetrics departments, and the hospital is running approximately 100 temporary medical/surgical beds to respond to the increased demand," the rating agency said. "While this resulted in year-over-year revenue growth of 6.5% in fiscal 2023, it has come at the expense of additional agency/premium labor cost to staff the additional beds."

The rating agency also addressed another pending shakeup in the region's health care world — the split between the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women's Hospital — and how it might impact South Shore Hospital, which operates a Weymouth community cancer center as part of a joint venture with both BIDMC and Dana Farber.

"Fitch expects the scope of its agreement with BIDMC to be limited to operations in downtown Boston and not to negatively affect operations at SSH's community cancer center," the agency said. — Colin A. Young