Sen. Gordon Responds to Hospital Purchase Bids by UConn Health and Hartford HealthCare

HARTFORD, CT — State Senator Jeff Gordon (R-Woodstock) today responded to the announcement that UConn Health and Hartford HealthCare have submitted bids to acquire several struggling Connecticut hospitals, calling the development a “big, critical turning point” for patient care across the state.

UConn Health has proposed to acquire Waterbury Hospital, Day Kimball Hospital, and Bristol Hospital, while Hartford HealthCare has put forward a bid for Rockville General Hospital and Manchester Memorial Hospital. These moves follow years of greed and mismanagement by Prospect Medical Holdings that not only created worsening financial instability of Waterbury Hospital, Rockville General Hospital, and Manchester Memorial Hospital, but spiraled Prospect into bankruptcy. Day Kimball Hospital and Bristol Hospital are not part of the Prospect system, they are independent hospitals but have been facing their own financial challenges.

“The sale of these hospitals is potentially good news, especially for Rockville General Hospital, which I’ve long advocated for, and for Day Kimball Hospital, which I have long supported,” said Sen. Gordon. “As a doctor, as well as a Senator, I know how essential it is that we not only preserve these hospitals but protect vital services like the emergency departments and expand local inpatient and outpatient care.”

Sen. Gordon, who spent ten years working at Day Kimball Hospital and served as Chairman of its Department of Medicine, expressed cautious optimism about UConn Health’s bid. He emphasized that its success depends on a strong commitment to preserving essential services like labor and delivery, maternal health, and behavioral health, while improving local access to care.

The state has shown an unacceptable delayed response to this for-profit/private equity crisis, particularly by the Office of Health Strategy (OHS) under the leadership of former Commissioner Deidre Gifford, whom Sen. Gordon said contributed to the crisis.

“I warned early on that failure to act would come at a steep cost. I highlighted the similar, but bigger, problem encountered in Massachusetts by the for-profit Steward Health and the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money that the Massachusetts state government had to use to try to fix the problem there. I warned that the lengthy delay by OHS to approve Yale’s prior plan to buy all three of the Prospect hospitals in CT would cause the deal to fall apart, costing more in the long run. Since this happened, the state now must step up to clean up Prospect’s mess and prevent for-profit private equity from taking over more hospitals. These financial models have no place in Connecticut health care,” he added.

Sen. Gordon called for urgent legislative reforms, including a ban on private equity ownership of hospitals, ending lease-back real estate schemes, and a complete overhaul of the state’s Certificate of Need system. Sen. Gordon worked in a bipartisan fashion for the past several years on such legislation, but for various political reasons, the legislation did not make it.

“I continue my fight to protect rural health care in our part of the state and take on hospitals that have cut back on such important services, such as labor and delivery at Johnson Memorial Hospital and Windham Hospital. I welcome further discussions with the Governor’s office, OHS, Hartford HealthCare, Rockville General Hospital, Day Kimball Hospital, and health care employee unions to ensure any hospital transitions prioritize patient needs, long-term service and financial stability, and protection of health care jobs. We need to better prioritize patient care in CT. It must be about patients over profits,” he concluded.