Irvine-based healthcare real estate investor and owner Sabra Healthcare REIT Inc. is moving toward the end of a long-running challenge with one of its major tenants.
The company has been dealing in recent months with fallout from problems facing three-hospital Forest Park Medical Center in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Forest Park defaulted after it failed to meet expectations and its operators lost financing.
The real estate investment trust recently sold the Forest Park Medical Center in Frisco, Texas, to an affiliate of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Inc., the lender to the owner of the other two hospitals.
Sabra Chief Executive Rick Matros said on Sabra’s fourth-quarter earnings call last month that he expects the Forest Park Medical Centers in Dallas and Fort Worth to be sold sometime in the latter part of the second quarter.
“They will each take a different path.”
Forest Park Fort Worth would be sold through the bankruptcy process, and Sabra itself would get the Dallas hospital back via foreclosure and then divest, according to Matros.
He moved on to talk about what Sabra would do once the Forest Park issue is resolved. He said the company will use cash from the Forest Park investments and other planned sales to look into other investments on a selective basis.
Sabra expects to have $275 million in proceeds from Forest Park and the other proposed sales.
“We don’t feel the need to rush into doing any investments,” Matros said.
TherOx Names Director
Irvine-based TherOx Inc. said late last month that it appointed D. Keith Grossman to its board of directors. His appointment is to a newly created board seat.
TherOx makes a medical device that delivers supersaturated oxygen to treat heart attacks.
The privately held company is conducting a confirmatory study to support a premarket approval submission to the Food and Drug Administration.
Grossman was most recently president and chief executive of Pleasanton-based cardiovascular device maker Thoratec Corp., his second stint in that job. Minneapolis-based St. Jude Medical Inc., which employs 422 workers in Irvine, bought Thoratec last year.
His background also includes serving as chief executive officer of Mountain View-based Conceptus Inc., a gynecologic medical device company that was sold in 2013 to Bayer Healthcare, a unit of Germany’s Bayer AG.
Grossman holds a bachelor of science degree in life sciences from Ohio State University and a master’s in business administration from Pepperdine University.
CareTrust Buys Texas Facility
San Clemente-based CareTrust REIT Inc. has spent $4.9 million to acquire an assisted living and memory care facility in San Angelo, Texas.
The New Haven of San Angelo facility has 30 units and land for potential future expansions to up to 60 units.
CareTrust said in a news release that New Haven Assisted Living, based near Austin, Texas, will continue to operate the facility under a 15-year master lease with two five-year options and Consumer Price Index-based rent escalators.
The deal capped a busy February for the owner and operator of healthcare real estate, which also included a $32.7 million buy of nine nursing homes in Iowa.
Hospitals Place in Survey
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, with campuses in Newport Beach and Irvine, and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, which has locations in Laguna Hills and San Clemente, are two of 50 U.S. hospitals that received the 2016 America’s 50 Best Hospitals award from Denver-based Healthgrades.
Healthgrades is an online resource for information on hospitals and doctors. It grades hospitals on clinical performance, quality of care and patient outcomes, among other things.
Hoag has received the designation for five straight years. It’s Saddleback’s second consecutive year on the list.
Bits & Pieces
Staar Surgical Co., a Monrovia-based ophthalmic device maker with a manufacturing facility in Aliso Viejo, said it signed a deal to provide its CentraFlow intraocular lenses to the Aier Eye Hospital Group Co., a Chinese provider of refractive eye surgeries. Aier has 100 eye hospitals throughout China. … Anaheim Global Medical Center said it’s working with Emeryville-based CEP America, which will be helping Anaheim Global staff its emergency rooms to assist in patient management. … Irvine-based device maker Lombard Medical Inc. said the first commercial procedure using its Altura endovascular stent graft was successfully completed at the Saarland University Medical Center-Clinic for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology in Germany. The procedure followed the late-January Leipzig Interventional Course. Lombard’s devices are used to repair abdominal aortic aneurysms, or a ballooning of the body’s primary artery. … Rancho Santa Margarita-based Integrated Endoscopy Inc. demonstrated its newly approved nuvis single-use arthroscopic device last week at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons’ meeting in Orlando, Fla.
