State Sen. Saud Anwar, co-chair of the state’s Public Health Committee, said he is concerned about the long-term well-being of Saint Francis Hospital and has asked Trinity Health’s CEO Montez Carter to consider a “frank conversation with Trinity’s headquarters in Michigan or Yale New Haven Health to acquire the hospital because the hospital needs investments.”
The Office of Health Strategy’s latest annual report on the financial status of Connecticut hospitals reported that Saint Francis Hospital’s total expenses were $914 million with a loss of $54 million and a negative operating margin of 6.4%.
“It needs a large number of investments to be able to provide the care that we expect from our hospitals in the state,” Anwar said.
Anwar said he has not reached out yet to Yale New Haven Health as he is waiting to hear back from Trinity on this issue. He said that the hospital serves a large number of patients on Medicaid and the amount of money the hospital receives from Medicaid “does not keep the hospital’s financial status healthy.” He added that the hospital does not receive enough resources from its parent company in Michigan to help sustain the hospital.
Paul Kidwell, senior vice president of policy for the Connecticut Hospital Association, said in an email that “Connecticut hospitals continue to face mounting financial pressures as operating costs — particularly for labor, prescription drugs, and supplies — rise faster than revenues, leaving hospital margins weaker than national and regional trends.
“At the same time, Connecticut hospitals absorb nearly $3 billion in losses each year because Medicare and Medicaid payments fail to cover the cost of care, a challenge that could worsen as new federal policies threaten to reduce Medicaid coverage and increase uncompensated care,” Kidwell said.
“Even as these pressures mount, Connecticut hospitals continue to lead the nation in delivering world-class care and innovation. But the challenges they face are not temporary – they are structural, compounding, and increasingly unsustainable, leaving hospitals and the patients who rely on them more vulnerable with each passing year.”
Anwar said Saint Francis Hospital is one of the most underserved in the state.
He said “if the path continues in this manner, I am worried about the viability” of the hospital, he said.
Sen. Jeff Gordon, a Woodstock Republican and physician, also said he has serious concerns about the hospital.
“I do have concerns about the viability of the hospital system,” Gordon said. “There have been concerns raised and if that is driving some of these other concerns, especially any type of losing doctors and other health care employees, patient safety concerns, staff safety concerns, then you know this is just going to get worse potentially and I think the state has a responsibility to say ‘alright, what are we going to do here?’”
Trinity Health of New England did not respond to a question regarding Anwar’s conversation with Carter about the viability of the hospital but said “like most health systems across the country, we continue to face financial pressures related to workforce costs, inflation, uncompensated care and reimbursement levels that do not cover the costs of delivering care.
St. Francis Hospital in Hartford on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“Despite these headwinds, we remain a stable organization and are committed to sustaining high-quality care and delivering on our mission for the communities we serve,” the spokesperson said.
The hospital has struggled over the last several years with inadequate staffing and two patient deaths and fines from the state Department of Public Health. Last year 15 hospitalists left Trinity Health of New England, the majority from Saint Francis, after the health system required them to shift their employment to California-based Vituity within 90 days or risk losing their jobs. An unknown number of nurses have also left the hospital.
Additional oversight of hospital continued
The state Department of Public Health’s contract with an independent monitor to provide additional oversight to the hospital has been extended another six months “to ensure substantial compliance with applicable federal and state statutes and regulations,” according to a letter to Saint Francis Hospital from Jennifer Armstrong, facility licensing and investigations section of the state Department of Public Health.
“This decision is based upon the IECC (Independent Expert Compliance Contractor) reports, meetings and Department inspections,” Armstrong’s letter said.
Rob Blanchard, communications director for Gov. Ned Lamont, said in an email that “because the matter is governed by a public consent order, DPH cannot comment beyond that documentation.”
Finding that the hospital violated state law and regulations after unannounced inspections in 2022 and 2023, the state Department of Public Health entered into a contract with an independent monitor to oversee the hospital, beginning in September 2024. The independent monitor’s contract was extended last August after inspections uncovered “serious violations of patient safety regulations and protocols at the hospital this past summer,” according to DPH.
“Over the past year, in accordance with our commitment to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement, we have been actively fulfilling the terms of a two-year consent order, which includes having an independent expert on-site through September—not as an extension of the order,” a Trinity spokesman said. “We continue to work cooperatively with the independent expert and Department of Public Health and have implemented action plans that strengthen and support safe, high‑quality care.”
More than 40 radiologists from Advanced Imaging Specialists are leaving Saint Francis Hospital on March 20 after the group sued the hospital for mismanagement and lack of equipment.
AIS confirmed to the Courant that once it has fulfilled its obligations under an agreement reached during mediation, it will no longer be providing radiology services at the hospital.
The departure of the radiology group follows a lawsuit AIS filed against Trinity Health last November. The lawsuit alleges Trinity Health breached a contract, claiming that the hospital’s radiology department was “significantly mismanaged” and that critical radiology equipment was not available as the “equipment did not exist, was in disrepair or was at the end of its service life.”
A Trinity spokesman said the hospital has “implemented plans to ensure uninterrupted radiology services, including the onboarding of new radiologists, coverage arrangements and partnerships that allow us to maintain 24/7 diagnostic imaging.”
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Several nurses at Saint Francis Hospital have said that the hospital recently closed two nursing units due to inability to staff them. They said the hospital continues to triple assignments in the ICU and due to inadequate staffing, some patients are left waiting in the ER a day or two before a bed becomes available in the hospital to provide them a higher level of care.
“It is not sustainable to be at this staffing level,” one nurse said. “My main concern is patient safety and I feel like we need to get the ratios back to where they were and staff coming in. We don’t have the ability to train nurses as we used to.”
A Trinity spokesman said “regarding staffing and workforce matters, like hospitals nationwide, we face staffing challenges in some areas and are continuing to recruit talent to care for our patients.”
More than 100 pages of inspections from DPH over the last year that were reviewed by The Hartford Courant highlighted violations of health regulations including failing to follow physician orders that directed continuous monitoring of patients’ cardiac rhythm; nursing staff administering oxygen without a physician; incidents of patients not receiving medications as directed by a doctor; failing to ensure isolation precautions with patients with illnesses that required such protocols; among others.
This follows more than a dozen reports from an independent monitor overseeing Saint Francis Hospital that The Hartford Courant obtained through a Freedom of Information request spotlighting two patient deaths related to inadequate staffing at the hospital.
A Trinity New England spokesman said in an email that the hospital takes “all patient safety concerns seriously and follow through investigative and quality-review processes whenever issues are raised.”
A system needing more resources
Trinity Health in Livonia, Michigan, a nonprofit faith-based health care system, oversees numerous hospitals across 25 states, including Saint Francis Hospital and Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, which is overseen by its regional partner Trinity Health Of New England.
Anwar said Saint Francis Hospital is dependent on the headquarters in Michigan to aid them with resources and support.
“I think we are recognizing that Livonia, Michigan, has stopped investing in the health care system as they go through struggles,” he said. “They are not able to keep up with the expected nurse to patient ratios that should make them safer.”
Anwar still has not heard from the CEO of Trinity Health, Michael Slubowski, in Michigan despite his staff sending messages and emails beginning at the end of last year. Trinity Health in Michigan did not return two emails for comment and a phone call from the Courant.
Gordon said, “I’m concerned when you have these big out-of-state entities owning and running hospitals in our state and they’re not based here, they are making more and more decisions that are corporate-based decisions, not patient care, health care employee decisions,” he said.