Overview

• Steward Health Care has filed for bankruptcy and plans to sell its physicians network to Rural Healthcare Group, an affiliate of Kinderhook Industries.
• The network includes about 5,000 doctors in Massachusetts and nine other states, serving around 400,000 patients.
• The transaction follows a failed attempt to sell the network to Optum, a unit of UnitedHealth.
• The sale must be approved by a bankruptcy judge and regulatory bodies in several states, including Massachusetts.
• Massachusetts officials and healthcare experts express concerns about the impact of for-profit ownership on patient care and physician-hospital relationships.