Lawmakers vowed to file a contempt charge against embattled Steward Health CEO Ralph de la Torre after he skipped a subpoena to appear before a U.S. Senate committee hearing into the chain’s bankruptcy.

“Workers have lost their jobs,” Sen. Ed Markey said following the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) hearing Thursday. “Communities have lost their hospitals. Patients have died, all because of Ralph de la Torre and his unending greed.

“But instead of answers from him today, we got an empty chair,” Markey continued. “So since Ralph de la Torre has shown only contempt for our health care system, its patients and workers, the United States Senate must hold him in contempt.”

The HELP Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, voted to open an investigation into the Steward Health bankruptcy in July and subpoena the CEO to testify before the committee.

Steward declared bankruptcy in May and is currently selling six Massachusetts hospitals. Two more, Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, were closed in late August.

Markey said the committee will vote on a bipartisan “civil and criminal” contempt citation against de la Torre next week.

“He will appear before our committee,” Markey stated, flanked by healthcare professionals from several Steward facilities. “He will answer. He will be accountable to all of these stakeholders.”

Markey noted the effort is “historic,” as the subpoena and contempt citation are the first to come out of the committee in four decades.

An attorney for de la Torre said the CEO would not testify on Sept. 4. The lawyer requested the hearing be postponed until after the company’s bankruptcy proceedings concluded, noting that Steward was prohibiting de la Torre from speaking on the company’s behalf regarding any “bankruptcy-related issues.”

“On June 25, Chair Sanders and I asked Steward’s CEO to testify before the committee,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy. “He refused without further discussion and did not counter with another date. He did not offer another company official. To be clear, the committee would have been open to working with Steward to ensure cooperation. They ended the negotiation before it started.”

Markey cited his recently released report highlighting the impact of Steward’s financial mismanagement, including an increase in patients turned away from emergency departments, higher death rates for certain conditions compared to other hospitals, and much more.

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In one example of deadly consequences at a Steward hospital in Massachusetts, Cassidy said, doctors realized mid-surgery supplies needed to treat a woman who’d just given birth had been repossessed and she died.

“I personally would like to hear from Dr. de la Torre how he made these decisions to siphon off so many services,” said Ellana Stinson, a doctor with the New England Medical Association who formerly worked at Carney and Quincy hospitals. “I really want to know how he’s able, as a fellow physician, to be okay with causing so much harm to patients, to their families, and the communities, and also how he’s able to cause so much harm to his call his fellow physicians as well. His decisions will forever leave a devastating impact on these communities.”

The chair reserved for Steward Health Care System CEO Ralph de la Torre sits empty during yesterday’s Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)