The Steward Files

Real estate investor Medical Properties Trust and Steward became entwined in a doomed partnership that put huge financial pressure on the hospital chain.

Ralph de la Torre, a former heart surgeon who built and became the face of Steward Health Care, steps down as board chairman and chief executive.

As Steward crumbled and patients suffered, its CEO Ralph de la Torre enjoyed a luxury lifestyle including international private jet flights with friends, billed to the ailing hospital firm.

Mismanagement by Steward took a vast human toll, tallied in lives lost, suffering endured, physical injuries, and moral indignities.

Steward executives pushed the hospital chain to get bigger and bigger, expanding across the globe and accumulating debt, but the situation for its patients became increasingly dire.

As well as living a luxury lifestyle on the company's dime, Ralph de la Torre maneuvered to have Steward contract with other companies in which he had ownership stakes.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigates Steward Health Care for potential corruption in its international business dealings.

As it struggled to pay vendors for medical supplies, Steward Health Care paid nearly $1.6 million to a British private intelligence firm that it had used to surveil and dig up dirt on critics of the company.

Steward prioritized intelligence-gathering on those who were viewed as opponents while health care services suffered.

Steward executives treated their in-house malpractice insurer, TRACO, like a piggy bank, pulling cash from it at will, and severely depleting the assets meant to cover claims of medical harm.