The District has settled a lawsuit that gives it the green light to sell the beleagured United Medical Center in Southeast. The city paid $6 million to Specialty Hospitals of Washington, the former owner of the hospital that challenged the foreclosure of the hospital in 2010 by the Fenty administration.
The settlement will allow the District to sell the 184-bed hospital, at Southern Avenue and 13th Street, Southeast. A Superior Court ruling this year questioned the validity of the foreclosure, which created uncertainty about the title of the hospital, according to the attorney general office’s statement.
Meanwhile, the Washington Business Journal reports a city-commissioned study by RSM McGladrey Inc., recommends keeping the hospital and continuing to run it. This would give it a chance to become a well-oiled machine — the hospital recently concluded its first profitable fiscal year in more than a decade — and a more desirable product to sell in a few years.
SHW sued the city last year, claiming that the District lacked the right to foreclose and asserting that SHW was deprived of assets appraised at $65 million and precluded from receiving more than $14 million in Medicaid reimbursements and other valuable components of the hospital operation.
