HealthSouth facilities awaiting sell-off

HealthSouth Corp.'s decision to look into selling off its outpatient facilities puts most of the health care company's eight rehabilitation centers in Maine in limbo.

The company, headquartered in Alabama, said it will sell or spin off its outpatient rehabilitation, surgery and diagnostic centers to concentrate on inpatient care.

That means the seven outpatient centers in Maine - in Auburn, Bangor, Brunswick, Falmouth, Portland, Springvale and Windham - will likely change hands within the next year.

The eighth center is the New England Rehabilitation Hospital of Portland - formerly Brighton Medical Center - which is owned by Maine Medical Center. HealthSouth operates the hospital under a joint venture with MMC, and Kelly Taylor, a spokeswoman for the company, said Tuesday any outpatient operations at the hospital would likely continue.

The company said the decision was spurred by a desire to concentrate on its core business of inpatient rehabilitation for people suffering from serious conditions, such as a stroke or brain injury. That business accounts for a majority of the company's revenue and earnings, HealthSouth said.

The outpatient centers offer rehabilitation services, specializing in sports medicine or helping people recover from workplace injuries, Taylor said.

The company also said it saw no intrinsic business value in operating the outpatient services in conjunction with inpatient lines of medical services.

HealthSouth had considered and ultimately rejected adopting a new name as part of its effort to recover from an accounting scandal that led to guilty pleas from more than a dozen executives who falsified financial records. The company's former chief executive officer, Richard Scrushy, was forced out of his job by the scandal but was acquitted of charges related to the financial reporting allegations.

However, Scrushy has since been convicted on a government bribery charge related to his time as head of HealthSouth.

Taylor said the company will look at a number of options for severing the outpatient centers. The best outcome, she said, would be "to find a buyer to work with the current management team and take those facilities out as a new company."

It could be as much as a year before a sale or spinoff is completed. HealthSouth has hired the investment firm Goldman Sachs to help with any transaction.

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