For-Profit Hospitals Don’t Work
By Victoria Kirkham ‘26
A for-profit hospital sounds, to many, like an oxymoron, and we’ll be waiting a long time before you hear me refute that claim. Having closed its doors on August 31, 2024, Carney Hospital in Dorchester, owned by the private equity-reliant Steward Health Care, is just one of the victims of the unimaginable greed of the few at the detriment of the many. Steward Health Care and its CEO are a prime example of how for-profit healthcare will always prioritize extracting maximum profit over the needs of the community– providing inadequate resources and staff to minimize costs while maximizing revenue through rapid expansion. If these hospitals can rack up billions in debt but pay owners and investors millions, I must ask: can “for-profit hospitals” truly function as a hospital should—providing reliable, adequate care for the community—or will they always be tainted by greed?
In March of 2010, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management acquired the Caritas Christi hospital system—including Carney Hospital—and created a new, for-profit company, Steward Health Care. Headed by Boston heart surgeon Ralph de la Torre, the company quickly acquired more community hospitals, including the now-closed Quincy Medical Center. Then in 2016, Steward sold its Massachusetts hospital properties to Medical Properties Trust for $1.25 billion, leasing the hospitals back from MPT; this move left the community hospitals with huge rent to pay, and, more important to the for-profit system, left Steward’s owners and investors with huge paychecks. Steward expanded rapidly despite increasing concerns over debt and neglect of their hospitals, maximizing revenue through minimizing costs. Steward’s private equity parent company Cerberus sold its controlling interest in Steward to de la Torre and a group of Steward physicians in 2021, with a total profit of $800 million. By this point, Steward faced millions in debt to medical equipment vendors, yet that same year, de la Torre and his group paid themselves $111 million from company funds while de la Torre bought himself a $40 million yacht.
The neglect of Steward hospitals had devastating consequences. The Boston Globe identified at least 15 individuals who died due to inadequate care resulting from equipment and staffing shortages at Steward hospitals, including at Carney. Gilberto Melendez-Brancaccio, who was supposed to be continuously monitored as he was restrained during a mental health crisis, was left alone due to understaffing. Tied down and struggling to breathe, with no one to help him, he died due to respiratory arrest. One particularly egregious example of the state of neglect in which Steward left its hospitals is the death of Sungida Rashid, who died in October, 2023. Rashid, who bled incessantly after giving birth at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, died after St. Elizabeth’s doctors were unable to use the embolism coil that could have stopped the bleeding—due to the devices having been repossessed weeks before. The company that was supposedly there to provide for the community prioritized shareholders over their patients.
How can a system like this one claim to benefit, or even care at all about the community? The hospital’s closure will ripple across the healthcare system in the Boston area. Nearby medical centers—Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Milton and Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester—must brace to accommodate more patients. Minutes can mean all the difference in some emergencies; BIDH Milton is 2.1 miles away from Carney, and Codman Square is about a mile away. In Boston traffic, that can be a 15-20 minute difference–assuming you’re going by car.
The majority of patients at Carney use Medicare or Medicaid, and the closing of a major hospital that many rely on for healthcare has thrown much uncertainty into an already-unfair and uncertain healthcare system. How can people trust a healthcare system that demonstrates carelessness? Who gives private-equity and for-profits the right to disrupt communities in this way?
This story has played out in dozens of communities across the country: a for-profit company inserts itself into a long-standing community pillar–in this case, a hospital that recently celebrated its 160th year in operation–and runs the fixture into the ground, leaving the consequences and burdens of its closure on the community they ostensibly serve.
Here, at Milton, I’ve been met with confusion when I bring up Carney’s closure. It’s fair to say that many Milton students are not familiar with Carney—and would have no need to be—but it’s important to be aware of events occurring in our community that may affect Milton students. Though the world is full of corporate greed and distancing ourselves from what we read in the news is easy, when such a familiar case hits this close to home for many of us, the least we can do is pay attention.