Lawmakers rushed a hospital oversight invoice to Gov. Maura Healey on Monday, agreeing on coverage responses to the Steward Health Care disaster that intention to higher regulate personal fairness companies and stiffen penalties for entities that fail to submit required data.
The well being care market reform invoice would give state well being regulators and Legal professional Basic Andrea Campbell extra regulatory oversight and enforcement authority over transactions involving personal fairness traders, well being care actual property funding trusts and administration companies organizations.
Home and Senate negotiators introduced their settlement Friday night, alongside a prescription drug reform package deal that the Legislature additionally despatched to Healey on Monday. After negotiations collapsed on the finish of formal lawmaking in July, the breakthroughs emerged simply earlier than the two-year time period should finish on Tuesday.
The late-session breakthrough leaves little time for any forwards and backwards with Healey on potential adjustments to the invoice and basically offers the governor a take-it-or-leave-it dynamic the place she will be able to signal the invoice into legislation or let it die by pocket veto because the Legislature that drafted the sweeping invoice is about to dissolve.
The invoice will increase penalties for hospitals that fail to adjust to information reporting necessities, mandates that lessors notify the state 60 days earlier than repossessing medical gear, overhauls how regulators handle care prices and assess assets, and blocks the Division of Public Health from issuing a license to ascertain or preserve acute care hospitals whose principal campuses are leased from an actual property funding belief.
The compromise doesn’t outright ban actual property sale-leaseback agreements, although it could require a proper materials change discover with state well being regulators. The Senate took that strategy in its oversight invoice, whereas the Home invoice had prohibited such leases that partially led to Steward’s chapter.
Sen. Cindy Friedman, the Senate’s lead negotiator on each well being care packages, made no express point out of Steward as she defined the compromises. However the Arlington Democrat decried the position of personal fairness in well being care, a perspective that Senate Minority Chief Bruce Tarr refuted.
“There is no room for private equity in the delivery of health care. These two things are completely at odds with each other — not a judgment, it’s a fact,” Friedman asserted on the Senate flooring. “Private equity’s job is to make money in the short term for investors. Health care is around delivering care and taking care of the needs of people who need our help because they are sick. Those two things do not jive.”
Tarr, who additionally didn’t straight identify Steward, stated he “generally” agreed that Massachusetts has seen the “devastating consequences” of personal fairness in well being care.
“I am not prepared to agree with a blanket exclusion, to the extent that for many providers, private equity, and particularly smaller practice groups, is the means by which they acquire the tools that they need to deliver health care,” the Gloucester Republican stated. “And so while I think those things need to be properly overseen and regulated, I cannot agree with the proposition that there is no role for private equity in the delivery of health care.”
The compromise broadens the oversight capability of the Health Coverage Fee, which in latest months helped vet the gross sales of a few of the Steward hospitals to new house owners.
At its annual price hearings, the HPC beneath the invoice would be capable of scrutinize pharmaceutical manufacturing firms, pharmacy profit managers, personal fairness traders, well being care actual property funding trusts, and administration companies organizations.
Non-public fairness transactions can be topic to the HPC’s materials change discover course of, and regulators might require data like audited monetary statements. After transactions are accredited, the HPC might require that entities submit extra data over the following 5 years, a instrument the company lacked in dealing with the sale of Steward’s doctor community to a personal fairness agency.
The settlement additionally requires personal fairness traders, well being care actual property funding trusts and administration companies organizations to adjust to monetary reporting necessities to the Middle for Health Data and Evaluation. Fines for entities that fail to submit requested information on time would skyrocket from $1,000 to $25,000 per week — with no cap.
The legal professional basic’s workplace would acquire instruments to carry personal fairness companies accountable beneath the compromise, together with extra investigative authority over well being care transactions.
The Home had handed its hospital oversight invoice on a 152-1 vote in Might, with the Senate voting 38-2 to move its model in July. Home Speaker Ron Mariano pulled the payments from convention committee negotiations in the course of the early morning hours of Aug. 1, and by Oct. 22, he informed reporters the “trades” weren’t lining up.
Tarr, a conferee on each the hospital oversight and prescription drug reform payments, aired his frustration Monday over how the Legislature was dealing with the agreements.
“These are matters that are extremely significant, they are extremely complex, and they are extremely impactful,” Tarr stated on the Senate flooring. “And it is unfortunate that we are considering them in an informal session, Mr. President, and that we were not able to consider these in the formal session so that they could have the debate and the recorded votes that they deserve.”
Leaders in each branches have suggested legislators of “potential” classes on Tuesday.
