New Efforts to Revive Hospital Deal

Connecticut Senate leaders are in talks with executives from Tenet Healthcare in an effort to breathe new life in a proposed hospital purchase that was presumed dead last week.

Incoming Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, said staff members were communicating with Tenet, and he had not yet been directly involved.

"We just wanted to let it be known that we would be available to reconvene a meeting if that should prove useful," Looney said. "We expect to hear from Tenet with affected interest from the hospitals and the unions that are involved representing the employees in the Waterbury hospitals as well.”

The hospitals include Waterbury Hospital, Saint Mary's, Manchester Memorial, Bristol Hospital, and Rockville General Hospital. The sale would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars and immediately inject needed cash into the struggling facilities' coffers.

Officials at several hospitals said they need money to pay for infrastructure and technology upgrades that they can't afford now.

Looney said the state needs to adapt to these new kinds of hospital mergers and create a regulatory environment that could allow them to exist in some form.

Strict regulations were what killed the deal in the first place.

Proposed restrictions on the sale that included limitations on hiring and firing and changes to operating hours.

"I'm surprised that was the issue since they were just proposals in nature," Looney said of the regulations.

Tenet Healthcare didn't respond to an email Monday asking for comment on the future of the deal.

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