Trinity Regional Hospital Sachse borrowed $68 million just three years ago to build a new, state-of-the-art facility in a fast-growing area northeast of Dallas, Bloomberg News reported. Since opening its doors in November 2021, the hospital has encountered a litany of problems. On Tuesday, it filed for bankruptcy and is searching for a buyer. Trinity Regional’s plight, exacerbated by its own missteps, follows similar trouble for health-care facilities across the U.S., including a chapter 9 petition for a hospital district in California and the announced closure of a hospital in Eugene, Oregon, home of the state’s flagship research university. The health-care sector is still struggling with the effects of staff shortages and higher costs for wages and supplies that came after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns and health crises in early 2020. But Trinity Regional’s own mishaps compounded its troubles from the start. Trinity Regional’s owners laid out the case for a new hospital in the bond offering: a fast-growing population, a site near a new highway, a fractured market with two recent hospital closures, a plan to expand into a 20-acre medical campus including doctors’ offices and an outpatient surgery center. The hospital would differentiate itself with a “lean” structure and a “culture of speed and quality in patient care,” with 30-minute limits for tasks such as reading radiology films. It would make “minimal” use of managed care and discounted services, the prospectus said, noting that 80% of the population in the area had commercial insurance.
Read more.
The financially troubled healthcare sector will be the focus of the ABI Healthcare Program, September 18-19, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. For more information and to register, click here.
