The county plans to have a new Prince George’s Hospital system owner and operator in place or at least identified by late March, according to a spokesman for County Executive Jack Johnson.
“There was a bidding process and the county did receive bids,” Johnson spokesman John Erzen said Friday. “Since then, the county has been reviewing those bids and getting presentations from the bidders, and we’ll be meeting with one of the bidders next week.” Erzen declined to identify the bidders.
On Thursday, Johnson and County Council members testified before a House Appropriations Subcommittee on the county’s financial commitments to Dimensions Healthcare, the nonprofit that runs the Prince George’s-owned hospital system.
Dimensions has said it needs $5 million by Jan. 26 or the system will have to close. The company claims the county previously agreed to make the payment, but Prince George’s says it has met all its financial commitments from a one-year, $26 million stabilization plan announced last March. The county was to pay $15 million and the state $11.3 million.
“The county executive and County Council said they will consider paying the $5 million Dimensions is asking for,” Erzen said. “But if they do pay it, they are going to come up with some conditions that Dimensions will have to meet in order to get the money because somewhere here we have to have some oversight.”
Erzen said the county has put approximately $50 million into Dimensions in the past four years, and a Prince George’s-funded study has shown Dimensions should be removed as the management company.
“We inherited a lot of debt and the cash in that we are receiving is not as much as our cash out,” Dimensions spokeswoman Suzanne Almalel said. “We are just cash strapped.”
Almalel said the county planned to find a new owner by March 31, “but we haven’t heard anything about that.”
“When the agreement took place, the state wanted to have it as an 18 month process because the state didn’t feel that the county would be able to get an owner in one year,” Almalel said. “And now that the deadline is here, the county doesn’t have any plan that Dimensions has seen.”
