Steward Health Care terminates its agreement to buy Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff

Steward Health Care System said Thursday that it’s terminating its agreement to acquire Landmark Medical Center, the Woonsocket, RI, hospital it had been seeking to buy for the past three years.

Boston-based Steward, which said it loaned Landmark about $7 million to pay off its debt, fund operations and maintain its payroll, said it was backing out of the asset purchase agreement because health care parties in Rhode Island and the special master who had run the bankrupt hospital had failed to meet conditions specified in the deal.

“Despite support from many of Rhode Island’s elected officials, regulators, unions and communities, a number of private health care entities are not in support of Steward’s model of integrated community care,” the hospital chain said in a statement.