Hunter
08/07/23
The company attempting to take financial control of Mercy Iowa City is accused of improperly serving process papers to the hospital.
The Gazette reports the incident occurred a day after a judge said the hospital hadn’t been properly served with a legal petition to appoint a receiver to take control. A health information management technician saw a woman entering the medical records area carrying a bundle of papers She reportedly said she had been trying to deliver some records and was directed down to the medical records department. The woman left the documents with the technician, allegedly not telling her that they were legal process documents.
Mercy attorneys were in court Thursday for the second time in less than two weeks since investor Preston Hollow Community Capital and master trustee Computershare Trust petitioned the court July 24 to take control of the hospital. They accused the companies of using deceptive and improper actions, which amounted to insufficient process service. They claimed the technician who received the process documents was not a former or current corporate officer of Mercy Iowa City nor a registered agent.
Computershare and Preston Hollow want a court-appointed receiver to take over the financial arm of the hospital, claiming that Mercy’s liquidity has dropped over 50 percent in the last nine months and will drop to a level making it difficult to maintain operations as early as September.