Sarah Jane Tribble

Noble Health, a three-year-old private equity-backed startup, acquired Audrain and nearby Callaway Community Hospital during the coronavirus pandemic. Facing staggering debt, lawsuits and two federal investigations, it sold the hospitals to a Texas-based Platinum Health Systems. This month, Platinum Health told hospital workers they no longer had jobs.

The U.S. Labor Department investigates Noble Health after former employees of its shuttered Missouri hospitals say the private equity-backed owner took money from their paychecks and then failed to fund their insurance coverage.

Dr. Joe Corrado saw his hospital being whittled away. Supplies for surgery disappeared, crucial medicines went unstocked, paychecks never came, he said. Just days before Noble suspended operations, he told management: “We don’t have the ability to do the things we need to take care of patients.”