Life and Debt at a Private Equity Hospital

Earl y one Sunday morning in May, a mouse wandered onto a high-voltage transformer at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston. The rodent died, and so did part of the power supply. In one building, a 1970s beige brick tower, lights went out. Nurses grabbed flashlights to search for medicine. As minutes became hours, staffers rigged up flood lamps, connected to still-functioning outlets by extension cords that snaked through hallways and stuck to the floors with colored tape. Electric beds no longer worked. A nurse gathered a pile of pillows to prop up a stroke victim for a meal. Read Full Article »