The head of Waterbury Hospital says layoffs and budget cuts are imminent regardless of whether state Senate leaders can rekindle interest by a Texas hospital chain to buy Waterbury and four other Connecticut nonprofit hospitals.

Waterbury Hospital's budget must be cut to accommodate a $9.77 million reduction this year in state and federal reimbursements for patients on Medicaid and Medicare, Waterbury Hospital CEO Darlene Stromstad said in a phone interview Monday.

She said some services will be discontinued and layoffs are "imminent," though she would not say exactly when.

The $9.77 million is slightly less than 5 percent of revenues for the hospital, whose patients are largely on government-funded insurance like Medicaid or Medicare rather than private insurance.

On Monday, The Courant reported that a top executive with Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare will come to Connecticut this week to meet with two leaders of the state Senate. Tenet withdrew its regulatory application to buy Waterbury Hospital and four other hospitals after the state Department of Public Health's Office of Health Care Access and the attorney general's office set conditions for the Waterbury Hospital acquisition that Tenet deemed too restrictive.

The incoming, highest-ranking Senate member, state Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said his meeting with Tenet is not intended to broker a deal. He said he will listen and get information about Tenet's "precipitous" withdrawal from the deal. Also scheduled to attend the meeting is Sen. Len Fasano of North Haven, the top Republican in the Senate.

"Obviously, they announced they were pulling out before the proposed conditions that were cited by OHCA and the attorney general's office were even made final," Looney said in a phone interview. "They were existing as draft conditions at the time Tenet withdrew before waiting around to find out whether they would be made the final conditions or not."

Tenet had plans to buy Waterbury Hospital, St. Mary's in Waterbury, Bristol Hospital, Rockville General Hospital and Manchester Memorial Hospital.

While Looney hasn't taken a stance on saving the Tenet deal, Waterbury Hospital executives are eager for it.

"Tenet, for us, was the best option," Stromstad said. "We worked really hard on it. We are enormously disappointed to be at this position. But if it requires that we work a few more weeks on it, then, absolutely, that's what we're going to do."

A few more months would be too long, she said.

"If we can't come to terms in the next couple of weeks on this after two years, then I think it's unlikely that we would be able to get there," Stromstad said, adding later, "We won't be having this discussion about Tenet in June. Then it's over, but people have forgotten to tell us."