PROVIDENCE – Three for-profit bidders for the financially troubled Landmark Medical Center have been given until May 6 to revise their offers.
R.I. Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein said on Wednesday that the bidders were given the time in order to reach more satisfactory negotiated arrangements.
Silverstein said he would make a final decision on May 10.
In a carefully-worded statement read aloud in court, Silverstein asked the bidders to attempt to reach agreements regarding what appeared to be deal-breakers.
He instructed both the bidders and the interested parties that “it takes two to tango,” stressing that the public interest was to be as much a part of any decision as was the total amount bid.
The judge asked RegionalCare, bidding $64 million to $69 million in purchase price and investment over five years, to reach an agreement with the Northern Rhode Island United Nurses & Allied Professionals union, Local 5067.
The union membership voted unanimously on April 7 to reject the final offer for a new contract with RegionalCare Hospital Partners.
Since that time, the union organized informational pickets at Landmark Medical Center and in front of the Superior Court in Providence to urge rejection of any bid from RegionalCare.
RegionalCare, in turn, bought full-page advertisements in The Providence Journal in an attempt to sway public opinion.
Prime HealthCare Services of Ontario, Calif., was asked to reach an agreement regarding managed care with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island. Prime’s enhanced bid was $58.5 million in purchase price and investment over five years.
Transition Healthcare of Franklin, Tenn., was asked to resolve: an agreement regarding managed care with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and an agreement regarding potential tax payments with the city of Woonsocket. Transition’s enhanced bid was $98 million in purchase price and investment over five years; initially, it offered $43 million.
Silverstein told HealthSouth, which had bid for just the Landmark affiliate, the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, it would be able to pursue negotiations with the successful bidder, once chosen.
Special Master Jonathan N. Savage asked the court’s permission to entertain potential new bidders in the process, which the judge ruled against.
R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin and Theodore Orson, a lawyer for the R.I. Department of Health, opposed the motion.
Orson argued that “the process can serve as a future template for the state in health care insolvencies, so that there was a need to preserve the sense of fairness and transparency.”
