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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Steward Health Care founder and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre is stepping down from the company.
De la Torre will resign as CEO and board chairman on Tuesday, Oct. 1, the Dallas-based company confirmed to WBZ NewsRadio.
"While Dr. de la Torre has amicably separated from Steward on mutually agreeable terms, he will continue to be a tireless advocate for the improvement of reimbursement rates for the underprivileged patient population," a Steward spokesperson said in a statement.
Read More: Healey: Mass. Has Seized Steward Hospital In Brighton
De la Torre has faced strong criticism for his role in the for-profit company's ongoing financial crisis, which led to the closure of Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer at the end of August and the upcoming sale of five other Steward-owned hospitals in Massachusetts.
"Dr. de la Torre urges continued focus on this mission and believes Steward’s financial challenges put a much-needed spotlight on Massachusetts’s ongoing failure to fix its healthcare structure and the inequities in its state system," Steward's statement said.
Following the news of de la Torre's resignation, Senator Ed Markey said in a statement, "This resignation comes too late for the workers, patients, and communities that Mr. de Torre harmed and abandoned. He has extracted hundreds of millions from emergency departments, operating rooms, and intensive care units to buy luxury property, expensive vacations, and yachts, all while patients suffered and died and workers and hospitals went unresourced. As a physician and CEO of Steward, de la Torre knew the cost of his greed and mismanagement, and he allowed it to rot the financial security of an entire hospital system anyway.
"Let’s not forget that Dr. de la Torre is just one part of this tragedy. His corporate enablers – Steward’s senior leadership and board of directors, Cerberus Capital Management, and Medical Properties Trust – also must face accountability. And every private equity firm and corporate entity that stands to profit from Steward’s bankruptcy and continued investment in hospitals across the country must understand that their profit-only gains cannot continue."
Governor Maura Healey also reacted to de la Torre's departure, saying in a statement, "Ralph de la Torre brought an unprecedented level of greed and mismanagement to health care in Massachusetts, and he could not leave soon enough. Now, with five Steward hospitals set to transition to new, responsible operators, we have an opportunity to not only preserve those hospitals, but make them better for the communities they serve. And that is exactly what we are going to do."
Last week, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to refer de la Torre for criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena to testify before the Senate HELP committee about the company's bankruptcy.
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