Westerly Holdco and NS Healthcare Holdco are affiliated with IJKG Opco, a hospital management company in Bayonne, N.J. IJKG Opco owns Hoboken (N.J.) University Medical Center, Bayonne (N.J.) Medical Center and was recently approved by a bankruptcy judge to purchase Christ Hospital in Jersey City, N.J., through Hudson Holdco, another affiliate.

As another bidding war over a struggling nonprofit hospital heats up in North Jersey, a Senate panel today took aim at the spread of for-profit hospitals by approving a bill that would require they disclose financial information to the public.

Any hospital that wants a share of the state "charity care" fund for treating uninsured patients would have to supply information detailing their operating budget, such as sources of income, its business holdings and salaries, and other information nonprofit entities are required to file with the IRS, according to bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen).

The state Department of Health and Senior Services would collect and post the information on its website, according to the bill, (S782).

Prime Healthcare Services pulled its bid to buy a New Jersey hospital last week, saying it was deferring to the wishes of local elected officials who wanted to see the hospital remain a locally operated nonprofit.

The proposed deal met strong resistance from a health workers union and a community group that aired concerns over Prime’s business model.

Prime leaders and Christ Hospital attorneys also faced tough questions from health regulators and the New Jersey attorney general’s office, including queries about billing practices based on findings of a yearlong investigation by California Watch. The nonprofit investigative news operation has identified a pattern at Prime Healthcare of billing Medicare for treatment of rare conditions among its elderly patients – conditions that enable the chain to reap lucrative bonus payments.

More than a year after the city of Hoboken laid off 13 city workers in a well-publicized layoff plan, Mayor Dawn Zimmer and the city are spending hours fighting one employee’s appeal in the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) court in Newark. Testimony obtained exclusively by the Reporter shows that the laid-off employee’s attorney has sparred with Zimmer over many controversial political issues that have occurred in town over the last year, including raises for Zimmer’s two aides, and internet blogs that appear to favor Zimmer.

Zimmer recently testified for more than four hours in one day in the OAL court regarding the appeal of former city Public Information Officer Bill Campbell’s layoff.

A ST. PATRICK'S Day parade has been a tradition in Hoboken for a quarter of a century. The tradition ends this year, and it is a loss to all in North Jersey.

New Jersey is often overshadowed by New York. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan is bigger. Unfortunately, the people pouring out of bars and parties in Hoboken on the day of its parade are drunker or at least less controlled. The Hoboken St. Patrick's Parade Committee's decision last week to cancel the parade traditionally held on the first Saturday in March is an admission that Hoboken cannot guarantee the safety of the spectators who come from far and wide to celebrate.

New Jersey is set to clamp down on a North Jersey hospital that insurance companies claim is billing them as much as 3,000 percent more than its own outpatient surgery centers charge for the same treatment.

Part of the plan by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration to contain rising auto insurance rates targets the business practices of Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, bought in December by the owners of three surgery centers in Bergen and Essex counties.

Since then, the new owners have been referring auto accident victims from their same-day surgery center to Meadowlands to take advantage of a fee loophole, according to insurance executives and confirmed by the Department of Banking and Insurance. The state limits what same-day surgery centers may charge, but it does not regulate what hospitals may charge for most outpatient care. And at Meadowlands, that difference can be substantial insurers and state officials say.

The former head of the Hoboken Parking Utility is facing eight years in prison after appearing in Superior Court on Friday to admit his role in the theft of $600,000 from that city’s parking meters.

John P. Corea pleaded guilty before Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson Jr. to official misconduct, a second-degree crime carrying a potential prison term of 10 years.

In entering his guilty plea, Corea, 45, a Hoboken resident, admitted steering three no-bid contracts to United Textile Fabricators, an arcade game manufacturer headed by a Toms River man, to collect and count coins from Hoboken’s parking meters.

Corea told the judge he made false statements to the Hoboken City Council about the company’s qualifications, and that he came to believe that the head of the company, Brian A. Petaccio, 51, of Toms River, had stolen a substantial amount of the city’s parking revenues.

After a very bitter and public feud, the Bayonne Medical Center and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey announced an agreement last month that made the hospital in-network for subscribers.

The dispute cast a large shadow on a bid by the ownership group of Bayonne Medical Center to purchase Hoboken University Medical Center. Some feared that customers of the state’s largest insurer — Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey — would be shut out of the the Hoboken facility.

The parties said last month's agreement would extend to Hoboken and quelled some of those fears, but the fine print of the agreement has raised new concerns.

Hudson County hospitals were front and center at a state Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Senate subcommittee meeting on Monday that focused on for-profit hospitals in New Jersey.

The hearing came just days after allegations of bankruptcy fraud were made against Hoboken University Medical Center (HUMC), and on the same day it was reported in The Star Ledger that Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus charges up to 3,000 percent higher for certain procedures by using a loophole in the medical system.

In Hudson County and across the country, failing hospitals are being bought by companies that try to turn a profit at these formerly non-profit institutions. But some worry that patient care will suffer as a result.

The ownership group of Bayonne Medical Center may be as well versed in the art of Trenton politics as it is in medicine.

Facing legislative calls for increased oversight of for-profit hospitals as it pursues a controversial deal at Hoboken University Medical Center, the group has spent more than $350,000 in the past two years on political campaigns and high-powered lobbyists to make their case at the Statehouse, records show.

The Bayonne hospital paid Rosemont Associates, a lobbying firm that employs former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) to help convince the chairmen of the state legislative budget committees to support an $11 million earmark to ease the sale of the Hoboken University Medical Center, records show.