Nashoba Valley parent company close to selling at least five Mass. hospitals

A brick building with green shrubs in front along a paved road.

Photo I WBJ File Steward Health Care announced the closure of Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer on July 26.

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By Colin A. Young I State House News Service

A lawyer representing Steward Health Care said in court Friday morning that the company is "close" to signing purchase agreements for at least five of its six for-sale hospital campuses in Massachusetts.

"I'm pleased to report we've made very significant progress with the parties, in no small part to the efforts of the mediator," Ray Schrock, Steward’s lawyer from the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said Friday. "We're not quite there yet but we are hopeful that we could close out the remaining issues between, on the one hand the buyers, on the second between the commonwealth of Massachusetts and our stakeholders, as we move forward toward what we hope is a signing of asset purchase agreements on hopefully all of the six hospitals that we're trying to sell. But certainly at least on five, I know we're close."

Steward hopes to be "reporting a favorable result on signing the asset purchase agreements for Massachusetts on Monday," Schrock said.

Steward officials previously told the court that they received binding bids from local operators to acquire six of their Massachusetts hospitals -- Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Saint Anne’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital – Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital – Methuen, and Morton Hospital. Last week, some doubt emerged around whether the Haverhill campus of Holy Family was included in the bid for that license, raising the possibility that hospitals beyond Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center could close here.

Schrock said that the outstanding issue related to the sixth hospital was under discussion between the mortgage lender for Steward's landlord and Massachusetts state government. On Thursday, Gov. Maura Healey called out the lender, Apollo Global Management, and said she has been "very aggressive" about pushing Apollo to sign off on a deal.

"So my hope is that they come to their senses and finalize this so that we can proceed with saving these six campuses," Healey said.