Medical group interested in purchasing Steward hospitals and reopening Northside Hospital

(WKBN) — Another medical group has expressed interest in buying Steward Health hospitals, and it also wants to reopen Northside Regional Medical Center in Youngstown.

Faith-based healthcare organization Yates Medical Group, LLC has been working to acquire Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital since April.

The group’s announcement comes just two days after Insight Medical Group expressed interest in the Steward Hospitals on Friday.

YMG CEO Benjamin Yates has a varied background in music, technology and medicine, having completed medical school rotations at Trumbull Regional. He now lives in Flordia but wants to come back to the Valley to operate the Steward hospitals and reopen Northside Hospital.

“You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time, you know, but I know we have the resources to do it,” Yates said. “I still know people from the top — the president down to the department chiefs, down to the janitors, to the security guards, the nurses, the rotating nurses.”

While YMG is a new organization, it has big plans and is ready to take over as soon as possible. Yates spent time working as a consultant and has experience turning around financially troubled hospitals.

“I probably would be the first CEO in Health Care who has doctors under him making more money than him. And I’m perfectly fine with that,” Yates said. “If you reinvest that into the quality of care of patients with the fine line of hiring directly but running a lean, mean efficient operation — it’s possible to do it. Just because you want to be ethical and charitable doesn’t mean you have bad business sense.”

Instead of leasing, Yates wants to purchase the land from interim operator Medical Properties Trust, which would mean reopening Northside Hospital. Steward closed Northside a year after purchasing it in 2017.

“It’s not going to be tomorrow. It’s a longer-term plan, but I do want to do it, and I want to do it the right way,” Yates said.

A press release from YMG said the group said plans “to convert these hospitals into nonprofits.” It said YMG expressed interest to Steward in May but experienced “several delays” before entering negotiations to acquire the Trumbull, Hillside, and Sharon hospitals.

“Despite the challenges, including unrealistic deadlines imposed on us, which we met, we remained focused on our goal,” the release stated. “When there was a threat of a shutdown announcement in July, we were approached to stop it and successfully prevented that through a heartfelt appeal, imminent proof of funds and Congressional support.”

Yates said YMG was able to get the funding in a matter of months — that Congressional support coming from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly.

The release goes on to say Steward gave Yates Medical Group less than 24 hours to pay $1 million to stop the August shutdown announcement and save the hospital.

“We miraculously got the money together but were asked by the consulting firm and their legal representatives not to pay it and to state that we were working together,” the release said. “For reasons unbeknown to us we were not given the hospitals.”

YMG increased its offer to MPT this weekend and hopes they’ll reconsider.

“I don’t want to file an objection, which is why I am just waiting for input, but then — if I have to — I will file an objection stating that we’ve been here all along. We’ve had the money to have benefited everybody, you know. So, what have we not been given it?” Yates said.

Yates holds strong beliefs about ethical and charitable care. He said it broke his heart to see the way Steward operated the hospitals.

“We need a lot more people who are ethically based, who actually care for people, who care for patients — people who are charitable, people who just work with a conscience and are not trying to line their own pockets,” Yates said.

Yates’s ultimate goal is to provide compassionate care to those in the Valley without cutting services.

First News will continue to update this story.

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