What does Children’s Hospital want? UMC board and county commissioners meet

County commissioners met with University Medical Center’s Board and UMC’s bankruptcy consultants and attorneys Thursday. The goal was to discuss the county hospital’s legal strategy as the bankruptcy hearings with El Paso Children’s Hospital continue.

UMC claims Children’s owes it around $90 million, although Children’s disputes that amount. Earlier this month, the proposed deal between UMC and Children’s Hospital fell through. In a surprising move, Children’s Hospital then filed for bankruptcy protection.

Children’s CEO Mark Herbers said that the decision was made to restructure the financial obligations of the hospital. But it was not in the best interest of Children’s that the hospital fall under a County hospital whose priority is adults.

The central theme of discussions was what does Children’s want? Last week a bankruptcy judge told both UMC and Children’s he’s leaning toward getting the two to mediate a resolution. But they already did that twice.

Mediation may mean they start the deal-making process over again, but at what cost?
UMC says already both hospitals have attorney fees in the hundreds of thousands.

Commissioners and UMC are hoping to get a resolution quickly fast. They discussed the timeline of the events and legal strategy. But really, everyone is scratching their heads, trying to figure out what Children’s board and CEO want.

Board Chair Rosemary Castillo aren’t communicating with anyone, not the public, not the county, not UMC.

“What we’re seeing right now is, yes we want mediation, oh but by the way, we don’t want to be part of UMC when this is done,” said Ryan Mielke, UMC spokesman. “So those are competing messages that we want to make sure get clarified.”

“I’m not quite sure what Children’s wants out of mediation,” said County Judge Veronica Escobar. “No one knows yet, so we don’t know if they want an affiliation with UMC or not, we don’t know if they want all the debt erased or not we don’t know what their end game is.”

UMC said it doesn’t know how Children is paying its attorney fees, nor does it know how Children’s employees are getting paid. Escobar does know Children’s is paying company Axis Partner’s $125,000 a month for Mark Herber’s CEO services. She discovered that in the bankruptcy documents.

The next bankruptcy hearing between the two hospitals in here in June 11.