Steward Health Care System has secured a “significant financial transaction” that an official says will “help stabilize” the company and save some of its Massachusetts hospitals from shuttering.

“This funding will help stabilize operations, including the resumption of virtually all elective cases, and more importantly allows us to continue operations at all of our Massachusetts hospitals,” the company’s executive vice president, Michael Callum, wrote in a letter to employees Friday.

“To be clear, we have no current plans to close any of our hospitals in Massachusetts,” Callum added.

Callum described the transaction as “bridge financing,” the terms of which have been agreed upon and the first tranche is imminent, he wrote.

Steward is the largest private for-profit health care network in the country and owns nine Bay State hospitals running the gamut of Eastern Massachusetts, from Haverhill to Taunton.

Four of those hospitals — Nashoba Valley in Ayer, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, Holy Family in Haverhill and Methuen, and Norwood, which has been closed since a devastating flood in June 2020 — faced the risk of reportedly being closed due to Steward’s financial state.

Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Morton Hospital in Taunton, Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River are also under Steward ownership.

The Dallas-based system reportedly owes $50 million in unpaid rent, according to a press release issued last month by its owner, Medical Properties Trust, Inc. Steward is also the subject of more than a dozen lawsuits in Massachusetts filed by vendors and employees over unpaid invoices since 2022, an issue first brought to light by the Boston Globe.

But in his letter to employees, Callum highlighted how Steward is in an advanced merger-and-acquisition process “that would bring in a significant equity partner to our physician organization, and the Company has already received very significant bids as part of this process.”

Callum added that the bridge financing will lead to the closing of the process and provide  “the necessary capital for a robust national physician group and the time needed for Steward to consider transferring one or more of our hospitals to other operators.”

Medical Properties Trust said in early January it had “agreed to fund a new $60 million bridge loan” in a plan that has Steward exploring “several strategic transactions, including the potential sale or re-tenanting of certain hospital operations as well as the divestiture of non-core operations.”

Steward has said 70% of its patients are covered by Medicaid or Medicare, and it employs more than 16,000 nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers. It has cited poor reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid services as a driver behind its financial challenges.

Developing story …