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Lender: Forum must act or risk extinction
Forum’s lenders postponed pushing for the disposition of Northside.
YOUNGSTOWN — The community risks losing the entire Forum Health hospital system if Forum leaders don’t take “additional and decisive actions,” a spokesman for the system’s major lenders says.
Lance Ignon, a spokesman for MBIA Insurance Corp., one of the lenders, would not specify what actions they want.
Atty. Heather Lennox, however, representing MBIA in Forum’s bankruptcy case, said immediately after a key bankruptcy court hearing Tuesday, that creditors would develop their own reorganization plan for Forum and would ask for implementation of a previously developed plan for the closing or sale of Northside Medical Center in Youngstown.
Creditors say Northside is losing money and is draining resources from the rest of the hospital system.
The lenders postponed pushing for the disposition of Northside by sale or closure because Forum asked the lenders to enter into negotiations on a reorganization plan, which he said were occurring Friday
Walter “Buzz” Pishkur, Forum president and chief executive officer, confirmed through the hospital system’s public relations agency Friday that negotiations with the lenders was ongoing.
Vince Bevacqua, vice president of media and public relations for The Prodigal Co., however, said Pishkur told him that it would be “inappropriate to comment on specifics of the negotiations at this time.”
Leaders of Service Employees International Union District 1199 said Thursday that Forum management had told them earlier that day that the hospital system’s lenders do not plan to file a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan.
Forum Health lost the exclusive right to develop a reorganization plan when it failed to file such a plan by Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Northern District of Ohio in Youngstown. As a result, Judge Kay Williams denied Forum’s request for a 45-day extension of its exclusive right to submit a reorganization plan. Forum filed for protection under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy laws March 16.
After Tuesday’s court hearing, Pishkur said Forum could have filed a reorganization plan but didn’t because it wasn’t one the creditors would agree upon.
Rob Johnson, Hospital Division director of SEIU District 1199, said Northside is paying its own way. SEIU District 1199 represents several hundred support workers at Northside. In addition, Johnson took offense at the lenders’ characterization of SEIU concessions as “nothing but a Band-Aid.”
“That was a pretty hefty Band-Aid. It was life-changing for our members,” he added.
Johnson also said the union’s members are “extremely disappointed” with the failure of Forum Health to demonstrate that Northside can stand alone without financial support from the other facilities.
alcorn@vindy.com