The corporation that owns Portsmouth Regional Hospital has been sold to a consortium of private equity groups.
HCA Incorporated shareholders today voted overwhelmingly for the 21 billion dollar sale at their annual meeting in Tennessee.
Despite the company's switch in ownership, Portsmouth Regional isn't being sold.
A local group on the Seacoast got the sale postponed, because it claimed to have the right to buy the hospital before anyone else.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
Portsmouth Regional Hospital has been part of HCA since the 1980's.
As part of the sales agreement, HCA had to contribute the funds to create a foundation to keep an eye on healthcare issues on the Seacoast.
That endowment became the Foundation for Seacoast Health.
The Foundation claims to have the right of first refusal if ever the hospital were to go on sale.
But HCA and the Foundation don't agree on this detail, so they were in Court earlier this week.
Attorney Dan Hoefle is vice chairman of the Foundation and he says the two sides struck a deal to strip out Portsmouth Memorial Hospital from the multi-billion dollar deal.
what the judge did is order the preservation of the status quo so that if we are successful and win in court, then that asset will be available for us to purchase instead of being pledged to some other lender and placed beyond the reach of the foundation.
HCA owns more than one-hundred seventy hospitals across the country, including the one in Portsmouth, and another in Derry.
The Parkland Medical Center is due to be sold as part of HCA to the private equity consortium.
The deal to postpone the sale of Portsmouth Memorial is due to run for about six months.
In May, a trial is scheduled for Rockingham Superior Court, where both sides can argue who has the right to buy or sell the hospital.
Warren Wilder says he knows how the court should rule.
He was an independent trustee of the hospital back in the 1980's, when it was sold to HCA.
Wilder says at that time, the right to buy the hospital back was written into the wording that established the Foundation for Seacoast Health.
it was put in for just these kind of purposes, to make sure that we, meaning portsmouth was getting the best healthcare that we could possibly get. and that if anything were to change, we'd have opportunity to make sure that change was beneficial to portsmouth, regardless of who else it might be beneficial to.
The big concern in Portsmouth wraps around the quality of care the community would get if the hospital was sold along with HCA.
Critics of the deal say private equity groups are only out to make a profit, and they do that by cutting costs.
Dan Hoefle of the Foundation for Seacoast Health says he wasn't encouraged by HCA's plan filed with SEC before the company was even sold.
they're focusing on their core operations in large, high growth urban and suburban communities, primarily in the south and western regions of the united states. they seek to obtain cost savings from cost reductions in workforce, and consider divesting non-core assets where appropriate.
Despite the evidence offered by Hoefle, analysts who have followed the health care industry say what critics predict may not come to pass.
Bradford Gray of the Urban Institute has researched the movement of hospitals into and out of the for profit fold.
He says not very many hospitals have been bought by private equity groups, though.
Still, from what he's seen, he doesn't see much reason to worry if Portsmouth Regional ends up being part of the HCA sale.
its not obvious to me that taking the company private is going to put a new set of pressures on the management team. the management team as i understand it, won't be changing.
Though managers might stick around, taking hospitals private may put them under other stresses.
Dr. Ashish Jha (Cha) of Harvard University's School of Public Health has done many studies on public and corporate owned hospitals.
He says he's found that both for profit and non profit hospitals can provide excellent care, and they can offer not-so-excellent care.
Jha says the type of ownership sometimes isn't nearly as important as other things.
hospitals really have to have the time and the energy and focus to ensure that every patient gets good care. and i can certainly imagine that hospitals under financial stress, hospitals that are undergoing litigation, hospitals that are having multiple owners over time, will have a much harder time focusing on quality, and much harder time ensuring that everybody gets good care.
The big price tag paid for HCA sheds little light on how much Portsmouth Regional Hospital is worth.
HCA may have to divulge that information to the Foundation before the trial begins next May.
When the trial gets underway, the court will need to sort through the claims of both parties.
A deal could also be struck before then, if both sides can agree.
