Last summer, after our Reveal episode on hospital landlord Medical Properties Trust (MPT) aired, we started getting concerned emails from staff at a different company with the vaguest of names: American Healthcare Systems, or AHS.
When we dug into AHS, we found that in just six years, it grew from a small office building in an LA suburb to a major for-profit hospital operator, running 18 facilities in six states. Its expansion provides a cautionary tale of what happens when investors turn a profit at hospitals by cutting fat, then muscle, and into bone.
At the heart of our story is Chelsea Adolphus, a 28-year-old woman who went to one of AHS’s hospitals in January 2025. Disoriented and medicated, she wandered out of her room. There was no one to sit with her: A week before, AHS had furloughed 78 workers, including many of the hospital’s sitters, to cut costs. The next day, she was found frozen to death on the hospital’s roof.
How does something like this happen?
In the case of AHS, we found that the answer lies in part in the company’s unpaid bills, which are sinking hospitals into financial chaos and making it difficult to provide care. More than 100 cases filed against AHS and its subsidiaries claim at least $65 million in debt for everything from medical equipment to patient linens. The hospital where Adolphus died could be foreclosed on. And a trail of court records, tax liens, and unreported documents show that this may be a calculated plan to leech cash from these hospitals.
—Mother Jones reporter Hannah Levintova and Reveal reporter/producer Ashley Cleek
