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Hospital auction delayed
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - February 06, 2008)
On Monday, a federal court judge ruled to postpone the auction of
Pascack
Valley
Hospital and its assets until March 4, eliciting mixed reactions from bidders, creditors and
Pascack
Valley officials.
“I was disappointed but not altogether surprised,” Westwood Borough Attorney Russell Huntington said Tuesday, stating that the “complexity of the overall situation” was a major factor in the judge’s decision to postpone.
PVH saw its last patients in November after declaring bankruptcy two months earlier. In the weeks that followed, Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) purchased the license for PVH’s mobile intensive care units (MICU). Additionally, potential bidders including HUMC, other area hospitals and a health care consulting firm came out of the woodwork, expressing interest in purchasing the hospital and its assets when bankruptcy hearings began in 2008. The auction was scheduled for Feb. 4.
Last month, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Rosemary Gambardella received the first request for postponement from Paradigm Physician Partners, also known as P3, a Connecticut-based health care consulting firm and potential bidder.
PVH’s bankruptcy attorney, Jack Zackin, repeated the request for more time last Friday and, despite threats from Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) to withdraw its joint bid with
Touro
Medical
College , Gambardella approved the delay.
“It went from the request of a single bidder to the request of the bidder, the hospital, the secured creditors’ committee, the unsecured creditors’ committee,” explained
Huntington . “Once the request was echoed, she [Gambardella] had little choice in the matter.”
Currently, there are three bids that have been publicized. The first is the HUMC/Touro bid, which proposes to keep a hospital on-site while adding a medical school. Due to time constraints in gaining accreditation of a medical school, HUMC and Touro asked the judge not to delay the auction.
The two other known bids both involve maintaining a hospital at some level. One is a joint project by The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and
Englewood
Hospital and
Medical
Center . The other is a bid by P3, the firm that initially asked for a delay.
“I am aware that timing has been an issue for Touro all along,” said
Huntington , adding that Westwood officials are concerned about the possibility that HUMC will pull the bid as threatened.
“We may lose them and have no other credible bidders,” he said. “In hindsight, the postponement would be a sad mistake.”
Huntington noted, however, that even if the joint bid is pulled, HUMC might decide to submit a new bid on its own.
P3 President Geoff Teed said he requested the additional 30 days because they only began working on the bid in November when the hospital closed. Prior to that, P3 had heard rumblings about HUMC’s interest in purchasing PVH and “thought it was a forgone conclusion.”
“We’re pretty far behind,” Teed admitted on Tuesday. “We are encouraged by it [the judge’s decision],” he said.
P3 initially wanted to purchase the real estate, 20 acres, but is now interested in expanding its proposal to maintain a 150-bed hospital while retaining a license for 280 beds, a number that Teed said other bids have not been able to match.
Teed met with members of the Pascack Valley Mayors Association last month to present the P3 plan to acquire the hospital, get it up and running, and eventually sell it, possibly to local municipalities.
Teed said that whether or not the postponement will be beneficial for Pascack Valley in the long run “depends on whether you believe there is a need for a hospital on this site. The 30 days will only delay the transfer of assets by two weeks. It’s an exceedingly short period of time. If there is a desire for a hospital on this location, this is the only plan that has that.”
Despite the delay, local officials remain publicly optimistic. “All of the communities have their fingers crossed,” said
Huntington , “hoping that they can get a hospital back in there.”
The
Pascack
Valley
Hospital auction is scheduled to be held on March 4. The hearing to confirm the sale will be held two weeks later, on March 18. P3’s official statement can be viewed on the company’s Web site, www.mdparadigm.com, where community members can make comments and express concerns.
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
| Comments (1) |
On February 11, 2008 Geoff said:
Just a couple of corrections -
The closure of PVH is godd business for other area hospitals.
1) HUMC/Touro have not committed to reopening a hospital. The MICUs and emergency department will continue to feed HUMC with more and higher paying patients.
2) Valley/Englewood have no interest in having PVH reopen as an acute care hospital.
3) P3 is the only bidder with plans for an acute care hospital. We have never viewed PVH as a real estate play and we are not in the real estate business. That said, land value is a significant lever in obtaining the funding for hospital's operations and our plan includes complimentary land use in the future but at that point the hospital will be a thriving high quality hospital and we anticipate zoning decisions will be more favorable.
Geoff Teed
President P3
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