The Massachusetts Senate is scheduled to vote Thursday on a massive, 115-page health care oversight reform bill inspired in part by the Steward Healthcare crisis.
The House and Senate drafted bills this year aimed at preventing similar problems from festering behind the scenes. The two bills remain very different: With lawmakers being asked to halt major business for the remainder of their two-year terms, both chambers have just 16 days to craft and vote on a compromise bill.
The Senate bill would require private equity firms with ties to health care providers to participate in an annual cost trend process and allow regulators to audit hospital financial statements as well as out-of-state parent organizations, private equity owners and real estate investment trusts.
What else would the Senate propose to prevent Steward’s collapse?
The Senate bill would limit the debt that private equity-owned health care providers can take on. The Health Care Policy Commission and the Center for Health Care Information and Analysis would monitor whether providers exceed their debt-to-income ratios, and regulators could report problems to the attorney general’s office.
Both bills would require renters to notify the state before seizing medical equipment or supplies and would increase penalties for failing to report financial data from $1,000 to $25,000 per week.
The House passed a resolution banning hospitals from leasing their main campus assets from real estate investment trusts, while the Senate doesn’t ban such sale-leaseback agreements outright, but would require a formal notice of material changes before a transaction and give the state more power to modify proposed transactions.