HUDSON - A bankrupt North Florida hospital has a new buyer: Hudson surgeon Dr. Alfred O. Bonati.
The orthopedic surgeon is a principal with Morning Star Holdings LLC, which has a contract to buy Gulf Pines Hospital in Port St. Joe for about $3.8-million, attorneys said Tuesday.
"I'm typing the order approving the sale right now," said C. Edwin Rude, a Tallahassee-based attorney representing Gulf Pines, which filed for Chapter 11 in May 2000.
A bankruptcy judge approved the sales contract to Morning Star on Nov. 21.
The company, headed by Bonati, is expected to close on the property between Jan. 10 and 20, Rude added. The 45-bed hospital has a staff of more than 100.
The Pasco County surgeon also owns the Bonati Institute, an outpatient surgery center off U.S. 19, and Gulf Coast Orthopaedic Center, the institute's back surgery rehabilitation center.
Those facilities would remain open after the Gulf Pines sale is completed, said Tampa attorney Christian O'Ryan who represents Morning Star.
But "to what extent it's going to continue to function, that I don't know," he said of the institute.
Neither Bonati nor Hubert Steely, director of the privately owned acute-care hospital in Port St. Joe, returned phone calls Tuesday.
O'Ryan said this will be the first hospital purchased by Morning Star.
But it is not Bonati's first attempt at hospital ownership. In 1995 he expressed interest in buying St. Petersburg's Physicians Community Hospital for $4-million after it closed. He dropped the effort after the St. Petersburg Times reported on complaints filed against him.
Bonati's trademark is his use of lasers and his own patented tools to perform minimally invasive back surgery.
Although he has earned praise from hundreds of patients, including NFL players, Bonati's techniques and a string of malpractice suits caused repeated confrontations with the Florida Board of Medicine in recent years.
In lawsuits, patients accused him of misdiagnosing their pain and performing inappropriate or unnecessary surgeries.
Last December, he settled a 62-count complaint and a long-running dispute with the Board of Medicine through an agreement that allowed him to continue practicing under another surgeon's supervision.
During the dispute, the state claimed Bonati improperly tested, treated or billed 14 patients from 1991 to '94. Bonati filed a federal suit accusing the board of trying to drive him out of business with repeated, unjustified prosecutions. He dropped the suit as part of the settlement.
On Oct. 15, the surgeon signed a purchase agreement to acquire Gulf Pines.
"Morning Star has actively been looking for a hospital," O'Ryan said. "They think it's (Gulf Pines) a good investment opportunity and it's a fast growing area," he added of the area that sits about 36 miles from Panama City.
Gulf Pine owes between $3.5-million to $3.9-million, Rude said. Now "as a result of the the sale all the creditors should be paid in full," he said, adding that most employees and management staff would remain after the sale.
Financing for the hospital purchase is not yet set, O'Ryan said. Morning Star could put $1-million down and pay the rest over 20 months, he said, or it could be financed through a third party.
