- Ted, welcome back.

Always good to see you.

We just saw Ian Donnis' story about the proposed sale of both Roger Williams Medical Center and our Lady of Fatima Hospital.

The owner, Prospect Medical Holdings, is looking to sell.

And really, when you take a step back, prospect situation is part of a broader set of challenges we're seeing as it pertains to healthcare in Rhode Island.

- Yeah, obviously, Michelle, as people saw in Ian's report, there are unique problems at Roger Williams and Fatima related to the private equity ownership and all the spillover effects from that.

But all Rhode Island hospitals are challenged by some of the same forces, relatively low reimbursement rates, the patient mix and all of that.

And just not having enough revenue.

And so that's something that would be true, regardless of who owns those two hospitals.

- And healthcare has always been top of mind for, you know, politicians, but this year, it seems even more so.

Recently, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, held this high level healthcare summit where he invited policymakers, healthcare providers.

One of the speakers was US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

Let's take a listen to some of what he had to say.

- I remember when all the major bank headquarters left our state.

The economic ecosystem that those bank headquarters supported fell apart, as the jobs and the professional support moved to where the new headquarters were.

Downtown hollowed out, downtown Providence still has not recovered.

And a lot of civic leadership in Rhode Island was lost.

There was a lot of pain, and I don't wanna see that replicated with our hospitals.

We have to make sure that local control prevails.

- So you hear Senator Whitehouse making an explicit economic argument about why it's so important to stabilize these hospitals.

- Yeah, and I think it goes to, Michelle, why the entire healthcare discussion, and particularly the hospital aspect of it, it touches on so many different issues, right?

First and foremost, it's, of course, a care issue.

Can people find providers?

Can they get specialists if they need them?

Can they afford those providers?

Do the Rhode Island hospitals have the suite of services people want, or do they need to go to Boston?

There's all that around care.

Then it's a economic issue, as Whitehouse said.

You know, they're a source of jobs, the hospitals.

They're a source of research, the hope is always they'll lead to big, you know, spinoff companies, the next Pfizer or something like that.

And then part of that is it's a budget issue, right?

The hospitals have said repeatedly, and you heard it at the summit, that they're not making enough money, their rates are too low.

They're looking to the state government to increase how much Medicaid pays them.

But that gets very expensive, very fast.

And I think that's part of why, you know, it's easy to tick off the challenges here, but it's much harder to find solutions.

- And this comes as the state's Department of Health finally has a new permanent leader.

Let's keep in mind, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, who was the last permanent leader, left more than two years ago.

Governor Dan McKee recently nominated Dr. Jerome Larkin to lead the agency.

So the timing is interesting when you factor in everything else that you're talking about.

- Yeah, and it's gonna be very interesting to see how Dr. Larkin kind of defines his role, where he makes his voice heard.

You know, the health department director has a lot of different responsibilities, from tracking immunizations, making sure that sort of thing is happening.

To licensing and regulation, you know?

Disciplining if a physician does something wrong, regulatory reviews of the hospitals and all that.

But then also the health director is a very important voice in these discussions, like we've been talking about, around the future of the hospitals, around the primary care shortage.

And so, you know, the governor certainly, I would expect lawmakers as well, will be looking at Dr. Larkin for kind of, what do you think we should do here?

Trying to talk to everybody involved and see where he thinks things should be going.

So it's kind of up to him how big a role he wants to take in all of this.

- Thanks so much, Ted.

I appreciate it.

- Good to be here.