Palmetto General Hospital is on life support.
Fewer patients and an exodus of specialists have left the more than 50-year-old hospital bare. The medical lifeline for thousands of patients in Hialeah and surrounding areas has been fighting to survive, according to interviews with hospital employees and their union representatives.
A new operator was recently tapped to run the hospital , which for months has struggled to provide care as its cash-crunched owner Steward Health Care tried to thin billions in debt after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. But questions remain about the new operator’s ability to turn things around for the struggling facility.
Employees at Palmetto General and other hospitals that were owned by the for-profit Steward Health have long complained about a lack of supplies, layoffs, ward closings, service cuts, broken equipment, and delayed payments to vendors and staff. Earlier this year, North Shore Medical Center in North Miami-Dade closed its critical but costly labor and delivery, neonatal, and behavioral health units to try to slow the financial bleeding. At Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes, a lack of supplies and clinicians to provide on-call services to the ER forced the hospital to divert ambulances away for patient safety.