Do I hear $1,000? Auction of Hahnemann University Hospital equipment begins

This article originally appeared on Philadelphia Business Journal.

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Interested in buying a used linear accelerator, an old hospital stretcher or even a fully equipped hospital kitchen? Now is your chance.

A Chicago auction company that specializes in the sale of hospital equipment has been approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to sell off assets of the shuttered Hahnemann University Hospital.

Centurion Services Group will host a series of auctions — the first of which began this week and ends Jan. 9 — selling Hahnemann medical equipment, supplies and other items.

The initial auction features about three dozen pieces of fixed radiology equipment that purchased new cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The opening bid price for each item is $1,000.

Centurion will then host a live webcast auction of Hahnemann equipment from Jan. 14-Jan. 17.

The second auction will feature thousands of hospital item including more than:

• 1,000 lots of specialty surgical instruments;
• 500 lots of disposable instruments such as catheters, staplers, linear and cutters;
• 500 lots of hospital beds and stretchers;
• 75 Medtronic defibrillators;
• 100 lots of ultrasounds and ultrasound related equipment;
• 100 lots of various endoscopy systems, scopes, light sources and processors;
• 50 lots of cardiology equipment including stress tests and EKG machines; and
• 10 anesthesia machines

Also being sold during the live auction will be a fully equipped hospital kitchen.

“There are thousands of items and there will be a multitude of sales,” said Ross Ettin, vice president of corporate development at Centurion. “There are a lot of assets, and assets in different buildings.… This a great opportunity for the community and for doctors and surgical centers and other hospitals to buy these items.”

In addition to medical equipment, non-medical items such as computers and office furniture will also be sold at auction, Ettin said.

Centurion, he said, is the largest aggregator of used hospital equipment. The company has contracts to manage surplus equipment for 1,400 hospitals around the country — and 350,000 square feet of warehouse space around the country to store those items. “We run auctions every single week of the year,” he said.

The Hahnemann auctions come more than five months after American Academic Health System decided to close the hospital because of mounting financial losses that were approaching $5 million a month.

Hahnemann filed for bankruptcy at the end of June, after which time American Academic systematically shut down different units of the Center City medical center until it was no longer seeing patients by end of August.

California-based American Academic is in the process of selling its other Philadelphia medical center, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, to Tower Health and Drexel University in a $50 million deal expected to close later this month. American Academic bought both hospitals from Tenet Healthcare Corp. in early 2018.

The order approving Centurion states proceeds from the auction will used to pay off hospital creditors starting with MidCap Financial, Hahnemann’s lender both before and after it filed for bankruptcy. The exact amount of money now owed to MidCap, an affiliate of Apollo Global Management, could not be determined at this time. At one point this summer, according to court records, Philadelphia Academic Health System (an affiliate of American Academic Health System) owed MidCap nearly $60 million.

Centurion’s deal guarantees minimum proceeds from the various auctions of nearly $2.2 million, according to court records. The amount of money Centurion receives will be based on an undisclosed percentage of sales above the minimum guarantee. Ettin said the vast majority of the proceeds from the sales will go to the hospital’s creditors.