savage

PROVIDENCE — A Superior Court judge said yesterday he will take another week before he will name a health-care expert to help oversee financially ailing Landmark Medical Center.

During a brief hearing yesterday morning, Judge Michael A. Silverstein told lawyers and state officials packed into a tiny courtroom that he has held five sets of interviews so far in his search for someone to take on the role of “special master” of the Woonsocket hospital.

Silverstein made his remarks at the conclusion of a presentation by Jonathan N. Savage, the Pawtucket lawyer the judge chose last month to oversee Landmark as a temporary special master.

Landmark petitioned the court late last month to clear the way for a potential merger with another hospital.

Landmark has been losing money for many years and at the end of the last fiscal year was $7.2 million in the hole.

According to Savage, the hospital owed a little more than $6 million to various creditors before last month’s receivership petition and has accumulated bills of about $1.1 million more since then.

Landmark has $7 million in cash on hand and about $2.5 million in reserve accounts to make principal and interest payments on $12.5 million in outstanding bonds, he said.

In his role as overseer, Savage is functioning as the hospital’s president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, approving all expenditures, hiring and other decisions.

He’s been spending three to six hours a day at Landmark, he told the judge.

Savage said he was able to stop paying vendors for services provided before June 26, the date he was appointed. But he is paying vendors for services provided since his appointment.

He separated the vendors into a four-tiered list, ranking them on how critical the products and services each provides is to Landmark’s operation.

One vendor on the list of critical service providers balked at continuing to supply Landmark, Savage noted in court.

The unnamed vendor sells “operating room supplies” to hospitals, a Landmark spokesman said later in the day. The hospital owes that vendor about $9,000.

Part of his work, Savage said, has been to communicate with the more than 3,000 vendors and “interested parties,” outlining the hospital’s financial situation and how the process of resolving its funding problems will unfold.

He has also held talks with organizations to learn whether they are willing to become a “strategic alliance partner” that would merge with Landmark, and ultimately, pay its bills.

Silverstein reviewed a list of more than 25 health-care consultants potentially capable of overseeing Landmark’s operation, before holding talks with five of them.

Savage will continue in his role at least until next Thursday, when the judge said he is “very likely” to choose from among the candidates he will have interviewed for the role. At that point, Silverstein may ask Savage to work with the consultant the judge chooses.

Silverstein also ordered Savage to make reports on Landmark’s finances available weekly to the hospital’s various creditors, affiliated health-care groups and other entities with an interest in the resolution of the hospital’s financial problems.

pgrimald@projo.com