RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University plan to partner (not merge!), which would create New Jersey’s largest academic healthcare system. The partnership would include clinicians in 17 of the Garden State’s 21 counties, with a total of 2,500 practitioners.

The  two organizations will remain separate corporations, with Rutgers Health Group providing clinical services to RWJBarnabas Health.

The announcement is just another example of the growing number of health systems seeking larger scale and ways to cut overlapping services and costs.