A federal judge in Chicago Wednesday gave the would-be buyers of Grant Hospital until Feb. 28 to secure financing for their $24 million purchase of the troubled North Side health-care facility.
If the proposed buyers do not have their financing in place by the end of the month, the judge may turn the hospital over to a court-appointed receiver, a move that would likely lead to its closure. The buyers said this month they had their financing in place.
“I don’t want to wring my hands anymore,” said U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen. Despite several extensions, the buyer, Healthcare Transactions Inc., has been unable to nail down commitments from all of its backers and come up with an adequate amount of money required for an escrow fund established by the judge, according to testimony Wednesday.
Healthcare Transactions’ lawyer said it has raised $125,000 of the final $300,000 needed for an escrow fund established to finalize the deal. Healthcare Transactions’ principals indicate that they are confident they will meet the judge’s deadline.
“We have all of the necessary things,” said one Healthcare Transactions principal, Gunther “Gil” Slaton, president of Princeton, N.J.-based health-care financing firm GSI Securitization Inc.
Grant is trying to avoid a fate similar to that of its sister facility, Edgewater Medical Center, which closed in December amid millions of dollars in losses and debts owed to government insurers as a result of an alleged health-care fraud ring. There are no allegations of fraud at Grant.
