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Massachusetts
Workers, community worry about Brighton hospital’s future amid Steward Health controversy
After 34 years as a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton, Susan Church is worried about losing the job she loves and the community she cares for, as uncertainty swirls around Steward Health Care’s eight operating Massachusetts hospitals.
“A lot of us have been here for 30 or 40 years. We all stayed because we do the best job we can for our patients. We care about this community,” she said.
Church, other health care providers and community members from Allston and Brighton rallied in front of the hospital on Monday — the day before a deal a deadline central to efforts to keep the for-profit Steward hospital network afloat.
The system has eight hospitals operating in Massachusetts, but as financial woes have come to light and politicians have accused Steward operators of failing to disclose financial information to state regulators, the company is looking to sell its physician network. Gov. Maura Healey and other elected officials have called for Steward operators, who they have said are “greedy,” to pull out of the state.
Steward announced in late February that it had secured a “robust financing agreement that will provide a $150 million cash infusion to provide additional liquidity as the company marches towards the sale of its highly desired asset physician group Stewardship Health.”
“This allows Steward to reset its operations and address vendor obligations, which it is working diligently to resolve in service to getting to a sustainable operating model,” a release put out by the company on Feb. 23 says.
Lenders agreed to the loan through April 30 to give the company time to execute the plan. With that deadline on Tuesday, Steward hospital workers say they have received little information about what’s going to happen to the hospitals and their jobs.
“Our members are really concerned that the hospitals will close,” Cari Medina, vice president for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, told the News Service. “They’re super concerned about Steward declaring bankruptcy, they want to know what happens to their jobs. But more importantly, they care about each other and their community, because this will affect patients too.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh told lawmakers last week that there was the potential for a bankruptcy filing and acknowledged that state receivership of hospitals had been discussed. She said “there’s much about this situation that we don’t control” but also emphasized that the state is “prepared to respond.”
“Every day at 7:30, we have a stand-up call with leaders across government, external counsel, people across the health care system, other colleagues in other parts of government, to discuss what we know, what we’ve learned and how we’re going to proceed,” she said.
Still, workers are nervous about the future.
“(Health care workers) want to know that they’re not going to show up tomorrow and have there be locks on the doors,” Medina said.
The Healey administration has held private meetings on preparations for various transition scenarios, but Medina said 1199 SEIU — which represents 5,200 workers in Steward hospitals — has not been invited to those conversations. They have, however, received communications from the Department of Public Health, she said.
Rep. Kevin Honan of Brighton, as well as Boston City Councilors Liz Breadon, Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn came to the rally to show their support for keeping the hospital open.
Honan said he had been born at St. Elizabeth’s, as had all of his family.
“This institution is more than an institution, it’s such a strong part of this community that is so important to us,” Honan said.
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Defense attorney says lead investigator’s texts revealed his ‘true feelings’ about Karen Read
New details emerged during opening statements of the Karen Read murder trial on Monday about texts the lead investigator in the case reportedly sent to friends.
In his opening statement, defense attorney David Yannetti spoke for the first time about text messages that Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor allegedly sent to his high school friends in the aftermath of the death of Boston police Officer John O’Keefe in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
Prosecutors allege that Read hit O’Keefe with her SUV and left him to die, while Read’s defense attorneys have long claimed she is being framed in a wide-ranging coverup.
Watch the Karen Read trial live on nbcboston.com, NECN, NBC Boston streaming platforms (including Roku, Peacock and Samsung TV) and NBC10 Boston’s YouTube page. Every night of the trial at 7 p.m., come back for analysis and more.
Yannetti said Proctor was a long-time friend of the family of Brian Albert, whose lawn O’Keefe’s body was found on, and he never stepped foot inside the home, asked permission to go inside or sought a search warrant for the home.
“Instead, he focused immediately and exclusively on Karen Read, the outsider,” Yannetti said. “Karen Read was a convenient outsider. She was most definitly not from Canton. How did Michael Proctor feel about her? How did he treat somebody he was investigating at a point in time when he should have been keeping an open mind, focusing on obtaining all possible evidence so he didn’t miss anything?”
“You will learn on the very day that John O’Keefe was found dead on Brian Albert’s lawn, Michael Proctor was texting with his high school buddies about this supposedly secret investigation, using his personal cell phone,” Yannetti said. “He was revealing information about this investigation to his friends, assuming that nobody would ever find out what he was doing and what he was saying. He was revealing his true thoughts about Karen Read to his friends. Not what he put in his sanitized police reports — his true feelings, to his friends who he trusted and in text messages he never thought would come into the hands of the defense in this case.”
“Lead investigator Michael Proctor called Karen Read names you would reserve only for your worst enemies. He told his friends that he hoped she would kill herself. He told his friends he had seized her cellphone.”
Yannetti said Proctor knew he shouldn’t have been accessing content on Read’s phone without a search warrant because there could be attorney-client communications on it.
“He told his buddies that he was searching her phone for nude photos, and he was disappointed he hadn’t found any yet,” the attorney said. “That is the professional and unbiased investigator who was chosen to lead the investigation into the death of John O’Keefe.”
Yannetti said in one text, one of Proctor’s friends commented to him that with a dead body found on his front lawn, Brian Albert was surely going to catch a lot of flak.
“Do you know what his response was?” Yannetti asked. “One word: ‘Nope.’ And he explained why. Michael Proctor assured his buddies the homeowner wouldn’t catch a lot of grief because “The homeowner’s a Boston cop, too.”
State police confirmed in March that Proctor was the subject of an internal investigation for a potential violation of department policy, but would not comment on what caused them to probe one of their own. However, sources told NBC10 Boston that the investigation is connected to the Read case.
Proctor remains on full duty while the internal investigation unfolds, and the Norfolk District Attorney’s Offfice has said previously that the investigation was not impacting Proctor’s case assignments.
