Forum seeks to terminate its pension plan

YOUNGSTOWN — The bankrupt Forum Health has said immediate termination of its 7,132-member pension plan is critical to its survival.

“The debtors’ short-term survival will indeed be threatened unless the debtors are authorized to immediately begin the process of terminating the pension plan,” Forum said in a bankruptcy court filing Friday.

Failure to begin terminating the ailing 41-year-old plan by July 16 “will cause irreversible damage to the debtors’ bankruptcy estates,” the health care system said.

A hearing is set for 9:30 a.m. July 14 before Judge Kay Woods of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Youngstown on Forum’s request to end its pension plan and to void nurses’ and service workers’ union contracts at its Northside Medical Center.

Also to be discussed at that hearing will be the motion by Forum’s creditors to deny Forum a four-month extension of its exclusive time to file a bankruptcy reorganization plan.

Forum Health, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 16, consists of Northside Medical Center in Youngstown, Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland, and various pharmacy, lab and home health care subsidiaries.

For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Vindicator or vindy.com