As the would-be buyers of Grant Hospital scout for investors to back their purchase, the trail has led them through the West Side studios of the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Well, sort of.
It’s not Oprah herself, although the Chicago-based queen of daytime talk undoubtedly would have the cash to satisfy Grant’s creditors, but a recent guest on her show that has the potential buyers buzzing about finally closing a purchase of the North Side hospital.
Noted New York cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, who appeared on Oprah last week as part of discussion on heart disease in women, will be back in Chicago this week to view the facility, located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, attorneys involved in the purchase say. His appearance, taped Feb. 20, aired Feb. 25.
Oz, who is director of the cardiovascular institute at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, appears regularly as a TV analyst and is known as much for his medical expertise as for his blunt discussions about heart disease. “I won’t operate on any smoker who refuses to quit,” Oz told the Turkish Daily News in an interview last year.
Sources close to the sale say Oz, his partners and proposed buyer Healthcare Transactions Inc. are interested in turning Grant into a specialized cardiac facility. Oz declined to comment Tuesday on the deal or his involvement with Healthcare Transactions.
So far, Healthcare Transactions has been unable to secure financing while creditors push to either foreclose on the hospital or sell it at an auction. Healthcare Transactions principals are Gunther “Gil” Slaton, president of Princeton, N.J.-based health-care financing firm GSI Securitization Inc., and south suburban cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Abel Garibaldi.
“His financial backer wants Dr. Oz to come through and make sure the facilities are what he is interested in,” said Richard Sirus, an attorney for Healthcare Transactions, which has offered to buy Grant for $24 million. “They … want this deal done, but they want to do their own due diligence.”
Still, a state court hearing this week could decide whether Healthcare Transactions will become just another bidder for Grant if a Cook County Circuit Court judge puts the hospital on the auction block.
After Healthcare Transactions last week missed another deadline to come up with financing for its purchase, a federal judge last week turned the hospital’s fate over to the state court.
Under an auction scenario, Grant could operate as a health-care facility while a trustee sells its real estate and other properties as a way of paying creditors until a buyer is found.
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.
Similac enhanced: Abbott Laboratories has launched a new version of its flagship Similac infant formula that includes fatty acids the company says are key to brain and visual development in babies.
Abbott’s Columbus, Ohio-based Ross Products division said its Similac Advance with Iron is supplemented with DHA and ARA, two fatty acids critical for neurological development. The new brand should be available in stores in April.
Abbott wouldn’t disclose revenue projections for the new version. In the fourth quarter of last year, Similac accounted for the bulk of Abbott’s more than $1 billion in U.S. sales of pediatric nutritionals.
Harvard expert on board: Baxter International Inc. has named Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Martin to the Deerfield-based medical product giant’s board of directors.
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Martin, 63, is dean of the Harvard University Faculty of Medicine, which oversees Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Baxter said Martin will become the company’s 12th board member.