The long-delayed sale of two financially troubled Rhode Island hospitals could finally be completed as soon as next week.
In a joint statement Thursday, top state officials said the Centurion Foundation, the Atlanta-based nonprofit seeking to buy Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence, is moving ahead.
“Yesterday, the Centurion Foundation received signed bond purchase agreements sufficient to finance and close on its purchase of Roger Williams and Fatima,” the statement said. “These agreements, providing more than $100 million in financing, represent significant and necessary progress towards ensuring that our critical safety-net hospitals remain open and able to serve Rhode Islanders.”
Signing onto the statement: Attorney General Peter Neronha, Gov. Dan McKee, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, Senate President Val Lawson, the state Department of Health, and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Centurion had faced a deadline of Friday, Feb. 27 for closing its financing. But with the bond purchases moving forward, Neronha plans to ask a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas to grant an extension until March 6 in order to get the deal done.
The foundation won state approval in 2024 to buy the two cash-strapped safety-net hospitals, but struggled to complete its financing until Rhode Island recently created an $18 million taxpayer-funded reserve fund to secure the deal.
In a statement, Centurion CEO Ben Mingle thanked Rhode Island officials “for working so diligently with us over these last several months to make the closing next week possible, including their agreement to file the extension with the Bankruptcy Court to allow the additional several days to close the transaction. All parties are now preparing closing documents that will result in the execution of the transaction on March 5.”
Roger Williams and Fatima are currently owned by Prospect Medical Holdings of California, which filed for bankruptcy last year, spurring fears that hospitals would close
The hospitals are among the biggest employers in their respective communities and other hospitals could be swamped if they were to shutter.
As Ocean State Media reported this week, hospital workers have continued pursuing their work amid years of fiscal uncertainty. Neronha’s office has used funding from an escrow account tied to a previous deal for the hospitals to keep them afloat amid the uncertainty.
Centurion’s Mingle said once the sale is completed, “CharterCARE hospitals and its 2,400 employees will be returned to a new 501(c)3 nonprofit organization under local control and management as CharterCARE Health of Rhode Island, and begin a new future.”
