Iowa

After a contract employee at Ottumwa Regional Health Center died of an overdose, police found video and photo evidence on his phone that he had assaulted ...

The Lifepoint spokeswoman said: “The actions of this one disturbed individual do not reflect who we are, our core values, or how we operate any hospital and in no way can be linked to Ottumwa Regional’s financial standing. Apollo bought the Ottumwa facility in 2015 from Warburg Pincus, and it became part of RegionalCare Hospital Partners. The recipients of his letter were asked to respond by Friday, March 31. Then, in 2019, Medical Properties Trust bought the real estate under 10 Lifepoint hospitals, including Ottumwa Regional, leasing them back to the facilities. Caraccio’s assaults on patients raise "serious questions with respect to whether these hospitals have the right resources or if they are being loaded with overwhelming amounts of debt to the point where they are forced to shift money away from patient care,” Grassley wrote in his letter. A spokesman for Grassley said the investigation by his office is ongoing. “The heinous acts of this former contractor clearly violate our policies and values, and our hearts are with all those affected by his misconduct,” she said. After he died on the job in October, the Ottumwa police accessed his cellphone, finding photo and video evidence that he had assaulted the patients, according to a police department investigator, Jeremy Tosh. Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter last month to the hospital, Lifepoint Health and Apollo’s chief executive, Marc Rowan. To finance these purchases, private-equity owners typically burden the companies they buy with debt, then slash the companies’ costs to increase earnings and appeal to potential buyers down the road. In it, he asked whether financial practices had reduced money for patient care and may have facilitated the sexual assault. [Lifepoint has more than 60 ](https://lifepointhealth.net/locations)acute care hospitals in 17 states, including Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.