Hudson hospital chain’s bid for nonprofit status approved by state health planning board

The state Health Planning Board Thursday morning unanimously approved CarePoint Health System’s application to convert its three Hudson County for-profit hospitals to nonprofit status.

The approvals make official the transfer of ownership of Christ Hospital in Jersey City, Bayonne Medical Center and Hoboken University Medical Center from majority owner Vivek Garipalli to the nonprofit organization CarePoint Health System that was announced in October 2021.

Although CarePoint “has completed the transfer of ownership without department approval, the department asserts that not approving the application and requiring the operator to revert back to its previous ownership structure may result in further undue financial hardship ... for CarePoint Health System as a whole,” the state board said in its recommendation for approval.

The approvals, which were expected, come with long list of conditions, including some related to financial transparency and others related to safeguards against overcharging in-network patients.

Previously the hospital chain announced it was selling 39.1% of the Bayonne Medical Center to BMC Hospital LLC, which already owns 9.9%. It could not be determined Thursday if that deal will be completed.

Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis spoke in support of the Bayonne Medical Center, saying “In 2019 I became aware of a situation with Bayonne hospital where there was a deal trying to be cut behind everyone’s back, where two of the CarePoint hospitals were going to be sold and Bayonne (Medical Center) was going to be closed. This was October of 2019.”

Davis went to say that anyone who wanted to close Bayonne Medical Center would “have to go through me.”

In October 2019, CarePoint Health and RWJBarnabas Health announced an agreement to transfer ownership of HUMC and Christ Hospital to RWJBarnabas Health. CarePoint also announced it was in the process of finding a “strategic partner” for BMC. The deal between RWJBarnabas Health and CarePoint Health was never completed.

Achintya Moulick, the CEO of CarePoint Health System, was asked about the real estate issues related to the hospital chain. At the time of the application, 67.5% of the Christ Hospital land was owned by CarePoint, 25% by Alaris Health founder Avery Eisenreich and 7.5% by Jeffrey Mandler, one of the previous owners of the hospital chain, Moulick said.

CarePoint Health leases the land at HUMC from Eisenreich and the land at BMC from Hudson Regional Hospital owner Jan Moshe, Moulick said.

“Once we are a nonprofit my goal is to raise bonds in the future and buy back all the real estate in the next one and half or two years,” said Moulick, who later added that “health care should not be determined by property ownership and profiteering and lawsuits.”

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