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Steward Health again fails to meet state deadline

Quincy Medical Center was closed last year amid financial losses.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

For the second time, Steward Health Care System LLC has failed to submit financial statements to state officials on time and is facing $1,000 a week in penalties.

Massachusetts’ largest for-profit hospital network also has failed to pay a $5,000 state fine levied last year, when it refused to submit information on time, state officials said.

The state’s Center for Health Information and Analysis collects financial documents from all hospitals annually to monitor their financial conditions and inform consumers and policy makers.

The center is seeking Steward’s company-wide consolidated financial statements, which include information about the company’s earnings, operations, cash flows, acquisitions, and more. So far, Steward has submitted financial data on its nine community hospitals in Massachusetts but not on the Boston-based parent company.

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“We are in the process of completing the audit of our overall company consolidated financial statements and we will submit them when they are ready,” Steward spokeswoman Brooke Thurston said.

The company did not respond to questions about why it has not paid the outstanding state fine. Steward is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and has in the past resisted making public information about its investors, nonhospital business, and potential acquisition targets.

In March 2015, nearly a year after the filing deadline, Steward finally submitted financial information for 2013, but redacted parts of the statements.

Those documents showed that Steward lost $55 million on operations in 2013, compared to a $22 million loss the year before. Steward has annual revenues of about $2 billion.

Andrew Jackmauh, spokesman for the Center for Health Information and Analysis, said the information Steward has provided so far about its 2014 performance is incomplete and unverified, preventing the agency from reporting completely on the condition of the health care company and its hospitals.

Financial documents for 2014 were due in April. The state started fining Steward $1,000 a week at the end of June; the fines are now up to $4,000.

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The company’s hospitals include St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton and Carney Hospital in Dorchester. Last year, Steward shuttered Quincy Medical Center amid financial losses there.

Steward, which acquired several struggling hospitals from the Archdiocese of Boston in 2010, has been one of the health care industry’s biggest proponents of accountable care models.

Such models pay doctors based on budgets and quality scores instead of compensating them for every service and procedure. Many health systems and insurers have started embracing these models, designed to control health care spending by better coordinating care.


Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at priyanka.mccluskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @priyanka_dayal.