For-profit company makes bid for Mercy Hospital
Mercy Health System of Maine has entered into a letter of intent to sell Mercy Hospital and its other facilities to Steward Health Care System LLC, a for-profit Boston-based hospital chain. Terms of the sales agreement, which is expected to take up to six months to complete, were not disclosed.
According to the Portland Press Herald, the nonprofit Mercy Health System of Maine includes the two Mercy Hospital campuses in Portland, nine primary care facilities in Greater Portland, the VNA Home Health Hospice and a medical staff of more than 800.
The newspaper reported that a number of federal and state regulatory steps must be taken before the sale can be finalized. The Maine Attorney General's Office told the newspaper it is too soon to determine whether it would have to weigh in on the transaction. Maine's Department of Health and Human Services and The Vatican are two of the entities that would be weighing in on the proposed sale.
Mercy President and CEO Eileen Skinner said the intention of the sale is to have Mercy remain a Catholic hospital. The for-profit Steward Health Care System has 10 community hospitals in Massachusetts, six of which are Catholic. The Press Herald reported that Mercy's revenue totaled $190.4 million in 2010, down from $195.6 in 2009. Steward is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm that bought the Boston-based health care system, then known as Caritas Christi Health Care, in 2010 for $830 million.
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