%1

Overland Park, Kan.-based Pinnacle Healthcare System and its hospitals in Missouri and Kansas filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, Becker's Hospital Review reported. Pinnacle Regional Hospital in Overland Park, formerly known as Blue Valley Hospital, entered bankruptcy with assets totaling between $10 million and $50 million and liabilities within the same range, according to bankruptcy court documents. The hospital, which was acquired by Douglas Palzer in 2018, lost its Medicare contract two years ago. CMS terminated the contract after determining the hospital did not "primarily engage" in providing inpatient care, a requirement for Medicare participation. Pinnacle Regional Hospital in Booneville, Mo., formerly known as Cooper County Memorial Hospital, also entered bankruptcy on Feb. 12. The bankruptcy filing comes after the hospital abruptly shut down in January. The hospital closed about a month after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services inspected the facility and cited it for sterile processing procedures. The health department ordered the hospital to stop performing surgery until the sterile processing unit was upgraded. Hospital officials initially said they were working with the state to rectify the situation, but they ultimately decided to close the facility instead of making the repairs. Read more.

Don’t miss ABI’s Health Care Program on March 5 in Nashville, Tenn. Click here to find out more and register. 

Valeritas Holdings, a New Jersey-based company that makes insulin pumps, said that it filed for chapter 11 protection, Beckers Hospital Review reported. Zealand Pharma, a Denmark-based drugmaker, will acquire "substantially all" of Valeritas' assets for $23 million, according to a news release. Valeritas manufactures the V-Go wearable insulin delivery device. The company said it will continue operations as normal during the transaction with Zealand.

A federal bankruptcy court trustee overseeing the case involving the owner of the closed Ellwood City (Ky.) Medical Center has had enough of requests by the company to extend its deadline for providing required financial information, the Ellwood City Ledger reported. Paul A. Randolph, acting U.S. trustee, filed an objection yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Eastern Kentucky District to Americore Holdings LLC’s latest petition to give it another 14 days to file schedules of assets and liabilities and statements on financial affairs. Americore already has been granted two extensions and was supposed to file the required documents by Tuesday, but did not and filed late Tuesday for another extension to Feb. 18. In his petition, Americore CEO Grant White said that he left the day-to-day operations to the individual CEOs for each hospital, including Beverly Annarumo at the medical center, who left the hospital on Jan. 3. He said that her resignation and being unable to hire a financial adviser because of money constraints were among the reasons he has not been able to successfully compile the information required. Randolph said it has been more than 36 days since Americore filed for chapter 11 protection, which he said should have been plenty of time. And he added that the excuses offered by White are not sufficient to provide for more time under bankruptcy court statutes. “In a time period of more than a month, the debtors have provided essentially no information to the United States Trustee,” he said. “Creditors have been similarly stonewalled.”

A bankruptcy judge has temporarily halted biotechnology company Melinta Therapeutics Inc.’s proposed chapter 11 sale plan, which calls for a potential takeover deal with the company’s senior lender, health-care investment firm Deerfield Management Co., WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., instructed the antibiotics maker to rework its proposed bidding and sale process of its assets to allow more time to look for other competitive bids. She directed lawyers for Melinta and creditors to consider extending the bid deadline and opening up the process to accept rival bids. The condensed time frame and restrictive bidding procedures concerned the judge because they could prevent someone else from bidding, she said at a six-hour hearing Tuesday. Judge Silverstein’s request for Melinta to push back its sale timeline came after several objections from the federal government’s bankruptcy watchdog and some creditors. The bid deadline had initially been set for Feb. 10 and an auction for Feb. 13. The U.S. trustee and Vatera Healthcare Partners LLC, a venture-capital and private-equity investment arm of Vatera Holdings LLC and one of Melinta’s largest creditors, had balked at terms of the deal that would allow Deerfield to proceed with a $140 million credit bid.