Why a healthcare giant has slowed care at a Miami hospital, and where it leaves patients
Dr. Christ-Ann Magloire came to South Florida more than 20 years ago to deliver babies. Her mission was to make it easier for women in underserved areas to get care.
The Haitian-American OB-GYN has helped hundreds of mothers give birth, many at North Shore Medical Center, a North Miami-Dade hospital that for decades has provided medical care to the surrounding communities of Little Haiti, North Miami, Miami Shores and El Portal.
But North Shore is bleeding.
Patients who can’t pay much out of pocket and stingy insurers have made it difficult for the hospital to keep up with expenses, executives say. To the west of North Shore, its sister hospital Palmetto General has also had money problems, with patient care sometimes delayed due to lack of supplies.
And now, both hospitals are up for sale.
Owner Steward Health Care System, considered to be the largest physicianowned healthcare network in the U.S, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy May 6 in hopes of squeezing itself out of debt. Now, the company has put all 31 of its U.S. hospitals up for sale, including five in South Florida, court filings show.
Steward’s CEO, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, who used to live in Florida, said the company’s hospitals and medical centers will remain open during the bankruptcy process. In January 2024, the company began a “comprehensive marketing process” to search for possible hospital buyers. By April, its Florida hospitals were also up for sale, documents show.
And concerns are growing in South Florida over the future of North Shore and its sister hospitals in Hialeah, Coral Gables and Lauderdale Lakes.
North Shore’s maternity ward is already barren.
The hospital, just off I-95 at 1100 NW 95th St, unexpectedly closed its critical but costly labor and delivery, neonatal, and behavioral health units in February to try to slow the financial bleeding.
“It definitely felt like a slap in the face,” said Jamarah Amani, executive director of Southern Birth Justice Network, a nonprofit that is working to make midwife and doula care more accessible in South Florida. North Shore was the go-to hospital for midwives in the area to send patients if their pregnancies became too risky, according to the licensed midwife.
A few days after Steward declared bankruptcy, executives had in-person meetings with workers in South Florida. Daniel Knell, president of Steward’s Florida market, told North Shore employees he hoped the bankruptcy process would let them catch up with delayed payments to vendors so the hospital could get the equipment and supplies it needs to be fully operational.
Steward’s CEO, de la Torre, made similar remarks during an in-person meeting with staff at Palmetto General Hospital, 2001 W 68th St. in Hialeah, according to people who attended the meetings.
Knell also agreed Steward
would participate in a June community town hall to discuss concerns residents may have about the future of North Shore hospital, according to DeQuasia Canales, vice president of 1199SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East. The union represents more than 450,000 healthcare workers in the country, including some at North Shore Medical Center, Palmetto General Hospital and Florida Medical Center, a Broward hospital also operated by Steward.
For Canales, her biggest worry is the future of ghostly North Shore. It’s ground zero in South Florida — an example of Steward’s financial crisis.
Palmetto is a “hospital that looks and operates more like a hospital, just with hiccups, compared to when we enter North Shore and it is a quiet place that feels less like a bustling hospital and more like a clinic in terms of the scarcity of the amount of people in there and the quietness of it,” Canales said.
MATERNAL CARE DESERTS INCREASE RISK
Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy raises questions on the future of North Shore, Palmetto General, Coral Gables and Hialeah Hospital in South Florida.
North Shore, which has been a lifeline for surrounding communities for more than 70 years, has seen trouble brewing for months. North Shore employees and union representatives who spoke to the Miami Herald said there have been delays in payments to some workers and vendors, also a problem at other Steward hospitals. Because of overdue bills, vendors don’t want to send the hospital new supplies, and there are delays in fixing broken equipment.
Some workers have had their hours reduced. And some patients had their elective surgeries canceled and are sent elsewhere for care.
But the largest sign things were amiss: the sudden shutdown of the labor and delivery services unit.
North Shore President Alejandro Contreras told employees in a letter, obtained by the Miami Herald, that the February clos