A New York private-equity firm is set to acquire Caritas Christi Health Care, the second-largest hospital chain in Massachusetts, and turn it into a for-profit enterprise, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal report.

Cerberus Capital Management will spend $400-million in upgrades to the hospitals and will assume $430-million in pension and debt liabilities from the six-hospital Catholic chain, which was created by the Archdiocese of Boston. Caritas officials said Cerberus will retain the system’s 13,000 workers and pledged to continue running the hospitals according to Catholic practices.

Equity firms have been aggressively pursuing nonprofit hospitals, which are expected to benefit financially from the health-care overhaul law that seeks to extend medical coverage to 32 million previously uninsured Americans.

The influx of capital might be too late to save New York’s storied St. Vincent’s Hospital, which treated survivors of the Titanic and the 2001 terrorist attacks but now faces $700-million in debt, says the Associated Press.

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