US Senate panel OKs action against Steward Health Care CEO for defying subpoena

BOSTON (AP) — Members of a U.S. Senate committee looking into the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care adopted two resolutions Thursday designed to hold CEO Ralph de la Torre in contempt — one for civil enforcement and another for criminal contempt — for not testifying before the panel.

The votes come after de la Torre refused to attend a committee hearing last week despite being issued a subpoena. Both resolutions will be sent to the full Senate for consideration.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said de la Torre's decision to defy the subpoena gave the committee little choice but to seek contempt charges.

“For months, this committee has invited Dr. de la Torre to testify about the financial mismanagement and what occurred at Steward Health Care,” Sanders said at Thursday's hearing. “Time after time, he has arrogantly refused to appear.”

In a letter sent to the committee Wednesday, Alexander Merton, an attorney for de la Torre, said the committee’s request to have him testify would violate his Fifth Amendment rights.

The Constitution protects de la Torre from being compelled by the government to provide sworn testimony intended to frame him "as a criminal scapegoat for the systemic failures in Massachusetts’ health care system," Merton wrote, adding that de la Torre would agree to testify at a later date.

“Our concerns that the Hearing would be used to ambush Dr. de la Torre in a pseudo-criminal proceeding were on full display last week, with the Committee soliciting testimony from witnesses calling Dr. de la Torre and Steward executives ‘health care terrorists’ and advocating for Dr. de la Torre’s imprisonment,” Merton added.

The resolution for civil enforcement of the subpoena instructs the Senate legal counsel to bring a lawsuit in the District Court for the District of Columbia to require de la Torre’s testimony before the committee.

The criminal contempt resolution would refer the matter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena.

“Even though Dr. de la Torre may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even though he may be able to own fancy yachts and private jets and luxurious accommodations around the world. Even though he may be able to afford some of the most expensive lawyers in America, Dr. de la Torre is not above the law,” Sanders said.

Texas-based Steward, which operates about 30 hospitals nationwide, filed for bankruptcy in May,

Steward has been working to sell a half-dozen hospitals in Massachusetts. But it received inadequate bids for two other hospitals, Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in the town of Ayer, both of which have closed as a result.

A federal bankruptcy court this month approved the sale of Steward’s other Massachusetts hospitals.

Steward has also shut down pediatric wards in Massachusetts and Louisiana, closed neonatal units in Florida and Texas, and eliminated maternity services at a hospital in Florida.

At the same time, de la Torre has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars personally and bought a $40 million yacht and a $15 million luxury fishing boat, Sanders said.

Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, testified before the committee last week that under Steward management, patients were subjected to preventable harm and even death, particularly in understaffed emergency departments.

She also said there was a time when Steward failed to pay a vendor who supplied bereavement boxes for the remains of newborn babies who had died and had to be taken to the morgue.

“Nurses were forced to put babies’ remains in cardboard shipping boxes,” she said. “These nurses put their own money together and went to Amazon and bought the bereavement boxes.”