Jeremy Hogue’s bid to revive a hospital left for dead appears to have been snuffed out.
Hogue’s company, Newport Beach-based Sovereign Healthcare Inc., had hoped to buy Brea Community Hospital out of bankruptcy.
Then earlier this month an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Trustee was reached. The deal, if approved, would allow the hospital’s principal owners to keep its buildings and 17 acres of land. Creditors would be paid some $10.3 million.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Ryan is set to consider the settlement at a hearing scheduled for July 25.
“It wouldn’t surprise us if there’s still a lot left to happen on Brea,” said Hogue, Sovereign’s cofounder and chief executive.
But Hogue said he’s not betting on it.
“If all does happen as the settlement sets forth, our attention turns elsewhere,” he said. “We have been pursuing several other opportunities in the area for our group of physicians. We’ll start putting those on the front burner and figuring out which ones make the most sense.”
Sovereign works with doctors to invest in surgery centers, imaging centers and hospitals. The company had offered to pay $30 million for the Brea hospital, the building that houses it and the surrounding land.
Judge Ryan shut down 162-bed, 200-worker Brea Community in April. The hospital, which is $13 million in debt, filed for bankruptcy in January.
A group that included Gaetano Zanfini, the hospital’s former chief executive, and Marc Grossman, its former chief of surgery, owned the hospital.
Several lawsuits had been linked with the Brea Community matter, including a suit filed by Richard Diamond, the hospital’s bankruptcy trustee, which alleged that Zanfini and Grossman tried to hide proceeds from a planned $42 million sale of the hospital’s real estate.
Hogue had contended that Sovereign could have run the hospital competitively because it is smaller and has more control over what drives costs and revenue,doctors.
Sovereign operates outpatient surgery centers and medical imaging centers in California, Arizona and Missouri. Its local healthcare facilities include Newport Plaza Surgical Center in Costa Mesa.
Sovereign, founded in 2002, is privately held. Hogue wouldn’t disclose specifics, but said the company’s revenue was in the “seven-figures.”
Before he started Sovereign, Hogue was the vice president of the Audax Group, a private equity firm, and directed investments into several early stage and midsize businesses.
Hogue’s career also includes working with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in its New York investment-banking group. He was an offensive lineman on the University of Southern California’s 1996 national championship team. He earned his bachelor’s degree from USC, attended its business school, and also earned a law degree from Harvard.
InSight’s New Chief Executive
InSight Health Services Holdings Corp., Lake Forest, named Bret Jorgensen as its new chief executive. Jorgensen replaces Michael Cannizzaro, who remains chairman, and is an operating partner of Boston-based J.W. Childs Associates, which helped take InSight private in 2002 with the Halifax Group, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm.
Jorgensen most recently was chief executive of AdvoLife, a Campbell-based provider of long-term senior care services. Los Angeles-based LivHOME Inc. acquired AdvoLife last year. Before that, Jorgensen was chief executive of Directfit in Irvine.
In the late 1980s, Jorgensen cofounded TheraTx, a nursing home operator and service provider that eventually was sold to Vencor Inc. (now Kindred Healthcare Inc.) of Louisville, Ky., in 1997.
InSight provides diagnostic imaging and information, treatment and related management services. It serves customers in 35 states.
