"Many of its hospitals are struggling and failing," he said, adding that the rent burden can force its tenants, companies like Steward Health Care and Prospect Medical Holdings, to cut back on hospital operations.Ī CBS News investigation found a pattern of supply shortages at 14 hospitals where Medical Properties Trust owns the real estate. Yet Simone said the firm has saddled several of its hospitals with unsustainable rents. In a statement, a Medical Properties Trust spokesperson said the company is "a trusted and committed resource for hospital capital and has been proud to enable operators of hospitals to unlock the value of their real estate assets" to pay for improvements. The firm's CEO, Ed Aldag, declined an interview, and the company declined to answer a detailed list of questions. "What they do is they provide cash, capital to the folks that run the hospital. "Medical Properties Trust does not employ any of the doctors or the EMS personnel," Simone said. Simone has advised clients to bet against Medical Properties Trust by shorting its stock, though he said neither he nor Hedgeye trade on the company. "They recognized an opportunity over the last decade, and that was private equity looking to sell hospital systems," said Rob Simone, an analyst at a Connecticut-based research firm called Hedgeye. hospitals, often in low-income communities. That doesn't happen here." "They recognized an opportunity"īased in Birmingham, Ala., the publicly-traded Medical Properties Trust has bought up the real estate of nearly 200 U.S. "You can submit an open records request and you could see all of our financial transactions. "I compare this to city government," Rocha Garcia said. She said she found out about the closure when the public did, and that she was never able to get a look at Texas Vista's financials because it is a private company. "There is no transparency," said city councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia, who represents the district Texas Vista serves. Some local officials say they have been left in the dark when it comes to figuring out the financial reasons for Texas Vista's closure. "I was under the impression that we owned the building." "I didn't know you could, like, rent out a hospital," said Carrasco, who learned about the real estate deal when Steward announced it was closing Texas Vista. Carrasco, who worked at Texas Vista for eight years, was one of more than 800 employees who learned in March that they'll be out of a job when the hospital closes its doors. "The nearest hospital is between 12 to 15 minutes away from our facility, and if you're having a stroke or a heart attack, time is of the essence," respiratory therapist Jessica Carrasco told CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Texas Vista's closure will bring this area's ratio to 0.2 per 1,000. The average nationwide ratio is 2.38 beds per 1,000 people. When the hospital shuts down on Monday, it will leave a population of about half a million people with just one full-service hospital which has 110 beds. Investors' role in next week's closure of San Antonio hospital under scrutiny 07:46Ī 356-bed San Antonio medical center set to shut down next week is the latest hospital closure raising questions about the role of private equity in the health care sector.įor more than four decades, Texas Vista Medical Center has been the primary health care option for San Antonio's majority-Hispanic south side.
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