Caritas Christi, the Boston-area Catholic health system, has been through the wringer and was looking forward to some capital improvements to be financed by issuing bonds. $100m of the bonds were to be acquired by Ascension Health — one of the two larger Catholic health systems that considered acquiring Caritas and then backed off. Today's Boston Globe tells us that the bond issue is on hold and Caritas is looking at layoffs. As my colleague Marc Bard is quoted as saying, Caritas is not alone: elective surgery is down and uncompensated care is up at all hospitals.
The article repeats Caritas CEO Ralph de la Torre's earlier pledge to keep all of its hospitals open, but I have to wonder whether there might be a change in the air — Carney Hospital is a candidate for conversion to non-acute-care uses, and such a conversion may well be a reasonable approach to cost-cutting while enabling a more appropriate use of the facility.
David Harlow
The Harlow Group LLC
Health Care Law and Consulting
