There are two groups Community Health Systems Inc. can’t push too far: the doctors at its hospitals, and the debtholders it owes billions of dollars. Right now, the creditors are winning, and the doctors aren’t happy.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the rancor about Community’s neglect of a local health system has gotten so bad that a group of doctors tried to get rid of corporate ownership and buy the company out. And 1,500 miles away on the island of Key West, Florida, doctors say patients are being overcharged so that Community, sometimes called CHS, can rake in cash.
The two locations are among Community’s most lucrative, and their conflicts are part of the flip side of an industrywide acquisition binge over the last decade. For-profit hospital chains like Community borrowed billions to snap up rivals, facing massive debt reimbursements just as the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, began to wane.
“I understand that they have billions in debt and may need to take money from this chain to service it,” said William Pond, an anesthesiologist at one of the Fort Wayne hospitals and president of the county health department’s executive board. “But it’s very disappointing to see the course that CHS is taking and the devastating effect they’re having on our community.”
Once the biggest U.S. for-profit hospital chain, Community is selling off other, poorly performing facilities to pay off $2 billion of its $15 billion in debt. Yet even as the company skimps on spending and patient satisfaction lags at key facilities like Fort Wayne, its bonds are rising in value — an indication that debtholders are betting that the chain will make a financial turnaround.
The company’s $3 billion of 6.875 percent bonds due February 2022 have gained almost 30 percent this year and were changing hands at 89 cents on the dollar, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The debt still trades at yields about 8 percentage points more than government debt.
If the chain can’t subdue the unrest at its most profitable locations, it’s not clear how successful the turnaround will be. Indiana and Key West represent just nine of Community’s about 150 hospitals, yet they contribute an estimated 16 percent of the company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Mizuho Securities analyst Sheryl Skolnick.
HENRY KOTULA 