A four-year saga to transfer ownership of two at-risk Rhode Island safety-net hospitals has finally reached the finish line.
Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, which combine for about 500 beds and almost 2,400 employees, were owned by for-profit, private equity-backed Prospect Medical Holdings.
The facilities had been under financial strain for some time. In 2022, Atlanta-based nonprofit Centurion Foundation announced plans to acquire their parent system and transform the facilities into locally governed nonprofits, a process that included financing and operating commitments to local government.
Centurion faced a curveball with Prospect declared bankruptcy in early 2025. Although the pair remained committed to closing a renegotiated sale via bankruptcy court, financing uncertainty at the top of this year allowed Prospect to wipe its hands of the facilities while the state pulled together an additional $18 million as guarantees for Centurion’s bond lenders.
News of the deal’s completion came earlier this month. Centurion reiterated the uphill battle to the closure this week in an additional announcement, where it emphasized that the hospitals have been financially stabilized and will continue to operate.
“Now, the teams at Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital can spend their time and effort where it belongs—providing excellent patient care—rather than worrying about whether the doors can stay open,” Ben Mingle, CEO of Centurion Foundation, said in this week’s release.
Both hospitals remained open throughout the bankruptcy and recent months’ financing uncertainty—an outcome that wasn’t the case for all of the hospitals owned by Prospect at the time of the bankruptcy.
The final financing package totaled $101 million in privately financed bonds in addition to the state’s $18 million reserve fund.
The new nonprofit entity, CharterCARE Health of Rhode Island (CHRI), has an annual operating budget of $330 million and a multi-specialty network operating more than 20 practices in addition to its two hospitals. It will operate in compliance with 80 conditions of regulatory approval outlined by the state’s attorney general and its Department of Health.
A joint statement from earlier this month from CHRI’s medical staff presidents—Peter Pizarello, Jr., M.D., at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, and Braidy Shambaugh, M.D., at Roger Williams Medical Center—said the organization’s physicians were “gratified that CHRI is now out from under private equity ownership and able to place medical quality and patient care ahead of corporate profits.”
Centurion’s Mingle, in this week’s announcement, similarly painted the transaction as “a triumph by a non-profit organization over a private equity giant that secures jobs and critical healthcare services for patients and entire communities.”