A Boston-based company made a bid this week to buy Miami-Dade’s publicly funded Jackson Health System, which serves the uninsured in the county and is one of the 14 hospital systems that make up the state’s safety net system.
The Miami Herald reported today that Cerberus Capital Management, one of the biggest private investment firms in the United States, is the owner of Steward Health Care, the Boston hospital group that this week made the $1.1 billion bid to buy Jackson Health System.
Steward delivered a letter early this week to the Public Health Trust, which oversees Jackson. The letter lays out “the terms of our non-binding letter of interest in becoming a long term strategic partner for Jackson Health System.” (See the full letter below.)
Martha Baker — president of the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Florida Local 1991, which represents 5,000 registered nurses, attending physicians, and health care professionals in the Jackson Health System — told The Florida Independent she doesn’t think the sale will go through. “Joe Martinez, chairman of the county commission, put a nix on this,” she said. “The Public Health Trust does not have the authority to make a deal to sell Jackson.” (See the commissioner’s letter below.)
“The public owns Jackson. We oppose selling Jackson and shame on any politicos who want to give it away,” Baker said.
She added that the bid calls attention to the problems plaguing Jackson: the need to improve operations, to put people in charge to develop a strategic plan that includes primary care, a more “cost-effective way to deliver health care.”
Earlier this week, the Herald quoted a Steward spokesman who touted the company’s success in turning around cash-strapped Boston-area public hospitals, but it also quoted Alan Sager, a health policy professor at Boston University, who said some Steward facilities are money-losers in poor neighborhoods and his fear is that patient care will be reduced to make profits.
Jackson Health System employs more than 12,000 workers and consists of four primary care centers, 17 school-based clinics, two long-term nursing facilities, an outpatient diagnostic center, a children’s hospital, a rehabilitation hospital, a mental health hospital, two community hospitals, and Jackson Memorial Hospital, the primary teaching hospital of the University of Miami.
Jackson is also a member of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, which “advocates on behalf of Florida’s 14 safety net hospital systems” with the resources to provide accessible and high-quality health care for all Floridians, regardless of their ability to pay.
According to Safety Net, their members make up only 10 percent of the state’s hospitals, yet:
- Provide over 50 percent of the charity care in Florida, and nearly 50 percent of all Medicaid hospital care.
- Seventy-five percent of their patients are government-sponsored or uninsured.
- Their Medicaid/uninsured patient caseload is 66 percent higher than the rest of the hospital industry.
Steward Health Care System’s letter:
Steward Healthcare System letter
Commissioner Joe Martinez’s letter:
