Court records paint dire financial picture of Steward's Brevard hospitals
Steward Health Care System, which owns hospitals in Melbourne and Rockledge, is in trouble.
Across the country, hospitals owned by Steward are under fire. In each case, the story is largely the same as the for-profit company leaves bills unpaid and goes silent when pressed by public officials.
The company is up to its ears in lawsuits in its home state of Massachusetts where it has $50 million in outstanding bills and is being sued by multiple vendors. Officials are trying to force the company to stop operating in the state.
The Brevard hospitals have not been immune as several local companies are suing Steward over unpaid bills.
One lawsuit filed by a pest control company is seeking to recover $1.6 million from Steward for clearing its Rockledge hospital of a bat infestation.
In Texas, the company recently shut down a hospital with only a week's notice. In Louisiana, one city is taking measures to ensure Steward will sell their local hospital to another provider after financial woes put the facility's future in doubt. In Brevard County, court records show a similar pattern for the provider, which operates Rockledge Regional and Melbourne Regional, along with several ancillary medical facilities that include providers across the Space Coast. Despite owing well over $1 million in unpaid bills at Steward’s Brevard County hospitals alone, data from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration shows Steward Florida Holdings LLC earned $37.7 million in profits across the company’s 10 Florida hospitals in 2021, according to its most recent filings.Steward representatives had not responded to emailed questions from FLORIDA TODAY as of Friday afternoon.
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Bats infested Rockledge hospital
Court records in Brevard County alone show that Steward has skipped out on paying vendors and contractors for the services they’ve provided multiple times.
Just this month, Nunez Lawncare and Landscaping Inc. filed a suit against Steward for $59,387.40 in unpaid bills after the company alleged they did not receive payment for services at the Steward's Brevard locations in 2022.
The lawsuit filed against Steward by Rentokil North America this past fall alleges that Rockledge Regional Medical Center received extensive services as part of a bat eviction, which included installing “bat valves” throughout the hospital that would allow bats to leave but not reenter the building.
Removing bats from the hospital required nearly two months of labor and hundreds of thousands in material, including the installation of multiple bat houses around the facility, the lawsuit said. The total cost of the removal amounted to $936,320 but Rentokil is demanding Steward pay over $1.6 million to include damages, interest, court costs and attorney’s fees.
A report on The American Prospect website says the hospital at the time of the bat removal was infested with the flying mammals and that the floors of the hospital were covered in guano in areas where the bats had been seen.
Rentokil’s grievance against the health care provider is the largest but not the only one to make its way to court.Cocoa-based Alerion Door and Glass Inc. alleged in court nearly two years ago that over $50,000 in bills for the installation of doors across the hospital went unpaid. By November of 2022, Steward had defaulted on the suit when their representatives failed to respond to the lawsuit.
On Feb. 20 this year, Steward was found in default on a lawsuit filed by PeakCM LLC, an Orlando-based construction firm, which sued the hospital for over $50,000 in unpaid bills. In that case again, Steward failed to turn in court-ordered paperwork to continue with the proceedings within the required timeframe. Lawsuits in recent years against Steward aren't the only time the company has gone silent in the face of scrutiny.
Elected officials in Massachusetts have grown frustrated in recent years with Steward Health Care system and its management. The company, which operates nine medical facilities in the state, is behind on rent payments by an estimated $50 million and is facing multiple lawsuits alleging non-payment to contractors.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has called Steward Health Care a “charade” and a “house of cards” in a recent press conference covered by media outlets such as the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. She has gone as far as to tell the for-profit healthcare provider to leave the state altogether and find other providers to take over their facilities.
Even high-profile figures like former presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) issued a statement saying she is "appalled by allegations of patient neglect at Steward facilities" in her state.
"Steward’s explanations for its failings do not add up. It’s clear that Steward executives put profits over patients and went to great lengths to hide critical information about its financial status from state officials," her statement goes on to say.
In other areas of the country, elected officials like Staci Mitchell, the mayor of West Monroe, La., told local media in that state in no uncertain terms that "we want Steward to leave."
Steward's two Brevard hospitals were operated as not-for-profits until 2010, when for-profit Health Management Associates bought them for $145 million. Steward, which is also a for-profit company, acquired the hospitals in 2017.Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay) who represents South Brevard County in the Florida House of Representatives and chairs the Health and Human Services Committee, said he has only recently heard about reports of Steward's ill financial health, adding that it was currently too late in the legislative session to introduce any new measures to address public concerns over the hospital system.
"I wasn’t aware of an issue with them until recently,” Fine said. “I plan to look into it after this session.”
Fine recently has used his position on the Health and Human Services Committee to push for the sale of Parrish Medical Center, the county's only publicly operated hospital, which serves North Brevard. Fine has said on many occasions that Parrish's record of operating at financial losses has put it in the precarious position of needing new owners.
Tyler Vazquez is the North Brevard and Brevard County Government Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Vazquez at 321-480-0854 or tvazquez@floridatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Steward's Brevard hospitals face mounting lawsuits, court records show
