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Medtech Firm Surgalign Files for Chapter 11 Protection

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Beleaguered U.S. medical technology company Surgalign Holdings SRGA.O filed for a voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday, Reuters reported. Surgalign filed for the bankruptcy with estimated assets and liabilities in the range of $50 million to $100 million in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The Deerfield, Ill.-based company said in March that it had reduced its workforce by about 20% and cut non-essential spending, and realigned resources. In November last year, the company approved a corporate restructuring plan, which included discontinuing some of its lower-performing units as well as intending to continue its brand and product rationalization programs.

Tucson Biotech Firm HTG Files for Bankruptcy Protection

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Tucson, Ariz.-based biotech firm HTG Molecular Diagnostics has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with plans to continue operations as it works out a plan to pay its debts, Tucson.com reported. The company, which developed a proprietary platform to rapidly develop molecular drug compounds, plans to exit that business to focus on its own development of new drugs to treat cancer and other diseases, according to bankruptcy filings. In a bankruptcy petition filed June 5 in Delaware, HTG’s corporate domicile, the company listed assets totaling about $6.7 million and debts of about $9 million. HTG, which was founded in 1997 and went public in 2015, was delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company's stock has traded as high as $24 per share in the past year but finished at 51 cents on Wednesday. For 2022, HTG posted a net loss of $21.6 million on revenue of $6.4 million.

OncoSec Medical Files Petition for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

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OncoSec Medical shares were down 55% at 19 cents after the company said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission it was filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy, MarketWatch.com reported. The stock is down 99% in the past 12 months. The company said its sole subsidiary, OncoSec Medical Australia, expects to liquidate and wind down operations under Australian law pursuant to a Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation. OncoSec also said that directors Linda Shi, Robert Arch, Stephany Foster, Joon Kim, H. Kim Lyerly, Kevin Smith and Chao Zhou each tendered their resignations, effective Wednesday, prior to the filing of the bankruptcy petition. Following these resignations, the company will have no members serving on its board of directors. Arch also tendered his resignation as the company's president and chief executive. As a result, the company no longer has any current executive officers.

Health Care Startup Acquires Patient Records of Bankrupt Birth Control Provider

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Health care startup Thirty Madison, the company behind men’s hair loss medication ‘Keeps’ and other treatments, has acquired patient records of bankrupt birth control provider The Pill Club, Bloomberg News reported. The acquisition announced Tuesday includes medical records, patient lists, prescription files and other customer and insurance information, according to documents filed in Texas bankruptcy court. Thirty Madison said the deal ensures continued care for more than 100,000 patients “who would otherwise be without options” and that The Pill Club’s patients will transition to receiving care through the acquirer’s women’s telehealth unit, Nurx. A majority of patients’ medical records and prescriptions have already been securely transferred to Nurx and its affiliated pharmacies, the company said on its site. The Pill Club, which was backed by an affiliate of venture financing firm TriplePoint Capital LLC, filed bankruptcy in April after California authorities accused the startup of fraudulently billing the state’s Medicaid program for contraceptives customers didn’t order and counseling sessions it never provided. The startup paid $18.275 million to settle state regulators’ claims without admitting wrongdoing.

Autism Treatment Center Files for Bankruptcy, Plans Sale to Founder

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The Center for Autism and Related Disorders, which operates 130 treatment centers in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in Texas on Monday with a plan to sell itself back to its founder, Reuters reported. The center suffered an $82 million net loss in the 12 months ending April 2023, largely as a result of long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., according to court filings in the Houston bankruptcy court. The company is majority-owned by the private equity firm Blackstone Inc, and it intends to sell itself in bankruptcy. It has a $25 million offer in hand from Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, who founded the center in 1990. Granpeesheh stepped down as CEO when the company was sold to Blackstone in 2018, but she retained a 21% equity stake. A sale to Granpeesheh would provide a “seamless transition” for the company’s 3,500 patients and allow the company to retain the majority of 2,500 employees, according to court filings. Based in Henderson, Nevada, the company specializes in applied behavioral analysis therapy for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Mallinckrodt’s Financial Struggles Put Opioid Settlement at Risk

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Generic drugmaker Mallinckrodt is at risk of filing for bankruptcy again, a development that stands to disrupt its commitment to paying opioid victims under a settlement deal — but former executives are likely to keep their liability releases anyway, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Dublin-based company, which reached a $1.7 billion opioid settlement last year through a bankruptcy filing, is now considering a repeat chapter 11 filing after struggling financially. If it files for bankruptcy again, its former executives’ grants of legal immunity from civil opioid lawsuits will likely be unaffected, according to legal experts. Those releases will stand “unless somehow the court in the second case felt it had the power to vacate the confirmation order in the first case — which rarely, if ever, happens,” said Bruce Markell, a former bankruptcy judge and now a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. But the remaining $1.25 billion in opioid settlement payments that Mallinckrodt still owes could be reduced or delayed because those claims are unsecured, meaning there is no collateral that can be seized. Mallinckrodt’s financial position has weakened considerably since the settlement was reached. Its earnings have faltered since the confirmation of the chapter 11 plan, which shaved off about a quarter of the more than $5 billion debt load that Mallinckrodt brought to bankruptcy court. The company has also been weighed down by some high-interest debt obligations that weren’t resolved in bankruptcy, and it has faced continuing litigation from certain lenders.

Compass Medical Files for Bankruptcy

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Compass Medical's decision to file for bankruptcy will affect a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of patients and might delay access to their health records, lawyers say, the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger reported. Compass filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy on Monday, less than a week after abruptly closing its doors and discontinuing services to about 70,000 patients. The Quincy, Mass.,-based corporation, which also had a branch in Braintree, will have no money available to pay unsecured creditors after administrative expenses are paid, according to the bankruptcy form submitted by Compass President Bruce Weinstein and his attorney, D. Ethan Jeffery. The bankruptcy filing comes on the heels of a class-action lawsuit filed in Plymouth Superior Court on Friday. The class representative in that case, Richard Callanan, of Abington, is represented by lawyer Jonathan Sweet. In October 2022, a Suffolk County Superior Court jury ordered Compass to pay $16 million to its partner, Steward Health Care System, for fraud.

Blackstone’s TeamHealth Weighs Debt Proposals, with $1 Billion in Loans Coming Due

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Blackstone-owned TeamHealth has received a pair of competing offers from two of its biggest creditors that are giving the struggling physician-staffing company starkly different options to repay over $1 billion in debt due next year, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Pacific Investment Management Co., which is known as Pimco and is the largest holder of TeamHealth’s loans maturing in February, has proposed swapping those loans for new debt backed by some of the company’s assets, such as its accounts receivable from government entities like Medicare. The plan would allow TeamHealth to avoid defaulting on its debts but would give Pimco first dibs on some of TeamHealth’s assets if it went bankrupt, a major advantage relative to other creditors. Ares Management, which holds hundreds of millions of dollars of the company’s bonds, has a different plan: It has requested that Blackstone, TeamHealth’s private-equity backer since 2016, kick in around $250 million of new money to TeamHealth, the people said. Combined with new debts Ares would provide, the funds would help TeamHealth pay down loans due next year. Ares’s deal doesn’t disadvantage any lenders or strip them of their collateral.

Texas Hospital Lays Off Workers in 28 Departments

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White Rock (Texas) Medical Center has laid off 30 workers across 28 departments, including clinical and administrative roles, Becker's Hospital Review reported. An internal memo to the hospital's employees and physicians deemed the job cuts a necessary cost-reduction measure, according to a June 6 news release shared with Becker's. "Such decisions are never easy," the hospital's administrative leadership team wrote in the memo. "Our hospital has had significant losses each month this year, despite investments in hospital programs. Such operating losses cannot be sustained." The hospital is the only Texas hospital owned and operated by El Segundo, Calif.-based Pipeline Health. The health system filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall, but exited bankruptcy in January under new leadership.

Mallinckrodt Stock Sinks as It Considers Another Bankruptcy

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Mallinckrodt’s stock fell by 40% Monday after the drugmaker said it is in talks with creditors about options including a second bankruptcy filing to fix its balance sheet and address a $200 million payment due this month under a previous chapter 11 restructuring, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Mallinckrodt has engaged with at least one creditor group to discuss restructuring options that could include another chapter 11 filing to deal with the coming settlement payment related to past sales of opioids. The Dublin-based company confirmed in a securities filing Monday that it has received offers from various creditor groups for restructuring proposals to be implemented both out-of-court and through chapter 11. The company said that its board is “actively evaluating this situation and considering options, including transactions that have been proposed by the holders and other company stakeholders.” Mallinckrodt’s stock was trading at $1.47 midday Monday, down 40% from Friday’s close.