The vote came after Steward Healthcare CEO Ralph de la Torre failed to comply with a subpoena to testify at a hearing in the company’s bankruptcy.
DALLAS — A Senate committee investigating the collapse of Dallas-based Steward Healthcare passed civil and criminal contempt resolutions Thursday against the health system’s CEO for failing to comply with a subpoena to testify before the committee.
The vote came after Steward Healthcare CEO Ralph de la Torre failed to comply with the first subpoena since 1981 from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to testify at a Sept. 12 hearing.
In an unusual move, the committee blamed much of Steward’s financial mismanagement on Dallas-based de la Torre, according to testimony and allegations from Sen. Bernie Sanders and others, and scrutinized his lavish lifestyle, which included a yacht and donations to a prestigious private school in North Texas.
“For months, the committee has invited Dr. de la Torre to testify about Steward Healthcare’s financial mismanagement,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, R-Vermont. “Time and time again, he has arrogantly refused.”
“Thus, we have left Dr. de la Torre with no choice but to enforce this subpoena and move forward with two resolutions to hold him accountable for his actions,” Sanders added.
In a letter to the committee obtained by The Associated Press, de la Torre’s lawyer, Alexander Marton, argued that the committee would violate his constitutional rights by forcing him to testify. Marton told the AP that de la Torre would agree to testify at a later date.
“Our concerns that this hearing will be used to ambush Dr. de la Torre with a quasi-criminal trial were made clear last week when the Commission called Dr. de la Torre and Steward executives ‘healthcare terrorists’ and called for testimony from witnesses who advocated for Dr. de la Torre’s incarceration,” Marton wrote in the letter.
Both resolutions will be presented to the full Senate. The criminal contempt resolution would refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to consider possible criminal charges against Del Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena, while the civil resolution would direct the Senate Counsel to file a civil lawsuit to compel Del Torre to testify before the committee, according to the committee.
A Senate committee on July 24 authorized an investigation into the Steward Health Care bankruptcy.
What you need to know about Steward Healthcare’s bankruptcy and de la Torre’s North Texas ties
Steward Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest private health systems, filed for bankruptcy in May and has since faced accusations of inadequate care delivery, closing hospitals and drawing the ire of lawmakers from both parties.
Since then, Steward has worked to sell more than a half-dozen hospitals in Massachusetts, but received insufficient bids for two hospitals, Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, which resulted in both hospitals closing, The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, Sanders alleged during the hearing that de la Torre had bought a $40 million yacht and a $15 million luxury fishing boat and amassed hundreds of millions of dollars for his personal use.
“Dr. de la Torre worked with private equity executives to make himself fabulously wealthy by loading hospitals from Massachusetts to Arizona with billions of dollars of debt and then selling the land beneath those hospitals to real estate executives who charged unsustainably high rents,” Sanders said.
The company operates about 30 hospitals across the United States, including in Texas, Massachusetts and other states, according to its website.
Former cardiac surgeon Ralph de la Torre took a controlling stake in Steward in 2010 when the company’s private-equity owner, Cerberus Capital Management, bought the six-hospital Massachusetts health system he led.
De La Torre owns an 11,108-square-foot home in Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood that’s assessed by the county for $7.2 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
De La Torre bought the ranch, 45 miles south of Waxahachie, in 2022 for at least $7.2 million, the newspaper said.
Sanders’ office said Steward publicly announced a $3 million donation to Greenhill School in Addison, where his sons reportedly attend.
“The organization’s quarterly publication lists De La Torre’s donation as coming from the ‘De La Torre Family Foundation,’ but the only active tax-exempt foundation in Ralph De La Torre’s name is the Texas-based ‘De La Torre Charitable Trust,’ which had just $7,034 in cash at the start of 2022 and has not reported any donations since 2021, public tax returns show,” a Sanders spokesperson told WFAA in Greenhill. “His struggling hospital chain filled the void. Steward Healthcare Systems LLC, which oversees and manages all of Steward’s community hospitals, donated $3 million to Greenhill Schools between May and August 2023, according to documents filed in the hospital chain’s bankruptcy proceedings.”
Greenhill opened the Rosa O. Valdez STEM + Innovation Center, a new 52,000-square-foot facility for math, science, technology and robotics classes named after de la Torre’s mother, in March, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A spokesman for Steward Health Care declined to comment on the bankruptcy and did not respond to a request for comment about the Greenhill donation.
Greenhill School did not respond to a request for comment about the donation.
According to the company’s website, Steward operates five hospitals in Texas: Port Arthur, Odessa, Big Spring, Houston and Texarkana. Healthcare Systems of America (HSA) recently assumed operational management of Steward’s Southeast Texas Medical Center and St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Houston.
It’s unclear how many people the hospital system employs in Texas or at its headquarters overlooking Klyde Warren Park.
