A Kansas City-based company that specializes in turning around financially distressed hospitals is proposing to purchase Hillsboro Community Hospital in rural Kansas for $6.9 million, KCUR.org reported. The company, Rural Hospital Group, was formed in 2017 and has acquired three other rural hospitals: one in Wellington, Kansas; another in Boonville, Missouri; and a third in Marion, Kentucky. It has since sold the hospital in Boonville. Hillsboro Community Hospital was placed in receivership in January and then in chapter 11 protection after its previous owner defaulted on its bills and other financial obligations. Through a subsidiary, Rural Hospital Group has submitted a stalking-horse bid for Hillsboro. So far, Rural Hospital Group appears to be the only bidder. “We have signed an asset purchase agreement, which starts the stalking horse process,” said Dennis Davis, one of RHG’s principals. Davis said he expects the purchase to close before the end of the year. The 15-bed hospital has endured multiple owners and a bankruptcy over the last couple of years. In 2017, its operations were taken over by a group of Miami businessmen led by Jorge Perez, a group that had acquired control of nearly two dozen distressed rural hospitals across the U.S. Last week, a member of the group, David Byrns, was charged in federal court in Kansas City with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Byrns was CEO of Putnam County Memorial Hospital in Unionville, Missouri, another 15-bed hospital taken over by Perez’s group before it was ousted by the hospital’s board of trustees.
