Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Wednesday his office would sue ProMedica if it does not pay the University of Toledo at least $3.8 million under a medical education agreement the two organizations struck in 2015.
The community organization Save UTMC organized a news conference Wednesday calling on ProMedica to catch up on its payments. The hospital had struggled in recent years, facing a deep budget deficit in 2020, though it has since rebounded.
Critics of the affiliation agreement said the deal was hurting UTMC — siphoning faculty and resident talent from the teaching hospital to ProMedica and contributing to the facility’s financial woes. UTMC has since rebounded, but the Save UTMC group on Wednesday said they are again concerned after the missed payments, and proposed cuts to the medical school.
“It’s really simple — ProMedica and UT have entered into an affiliation agreement, and if one party is not adhering to the terms and conditions of that agreement, then that’s a breach,” said Randy Desposito, president of American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 2415. “So what we are asking the UT administration to do is to stand up and hold ProMedica accountable for the monies that is alleged that they owe to the University of Toledo.”
Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, a leader of the Save UTMC group, said the affiliation agreement “has been disrespected and recently totally disregarded, walked away from, by ProMedica.
“We want ProMedica to be successful,” he added. “We do not wish them to be as challenged financially as they are at the moment. But that does not give the right to ProMedica to walk away from an agreement with UT and UTMC.”
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