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CHI moving away from insurance business

 

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Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), a large nonprofit health system based in Colorado, has dropped plans to develop a “wholly owned and nationally driven” insurance business, reports The Wall Street Journal. Instead, it’s going to sell portions of the health-insurance business it has now.

Its announcement comes in the wake of some other big systems saying that they would get into the insurance business and others saying  that they would get out.

Once more, fear and chaos triumph!

Fierce Healthcare reported that Dean Swindle, chief financial officer and president of its enterprise business lines for CHI, didn’t agree to an interview on the latest news,  but told the WSJ in April that “it’s tough in the health plan business. You lose money. You make mistakes. You plow forward. It takes cash.”

Fierce reported: Many hospitals face difficulties establishing an insurance arm, Eric R. Wagner, executive vice president for insurance and diversified operation for MedStar Health… told FierceHealthcare last year: “There is more volatility associated with insurance. You need to be prepared mentally to take on that volatility and truthfully not to panic when you have a bad month.”

In addition to CHI, The Wall Street Journal noted that Tenet Healthcare, based in Dallas, and WellStar Health System and Piedmont Healthcare, both in Georgia, also will exit the  insurance business because of financial losses.

To read The Wall Street Journal’s story, please hit this link.

To read a Fierce analysis, please hit this link.


WellStar to expand into Atlanta

 

WellStar Health System  will acquire five Tenet Healthcare Corp. hospitals in a deal valued at $661 million.

The purchase will expand Marietta, Ga.-based WellStar’s  reach into Atlanta and add two trauma centers and 26 physician clinics to its  operations.


Harsher new world for academic medical centers

 

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Modern Healthcare sees the merger of the University of Arizona Health Network and Banner Health as an example of responding to the tough new challenges facing academic medical centers.

”Academic centers, with their research and education missions, long have been high-cost institutions, but have been able to cover their added operating expenses through higher payment rates. Under public and private reform initiatives, where the goal is to reduce costs, these sprawling downtown hospitals are fast becoming bloated relics of another era.”Another example of the consolidate or die situation is that Emory University is talking with WellStar Health System about combining their systems  in metropolitan Atlanta.



Big ‘merger of equals’ in Atlanta?

 

WellStar Health System and Emory University are  considering creating  a combined organization to bring nearly a dozen hospitals under a single umbrella.

“This is a true merger of equals that is very unique,” said Reynold Jennings, WellStar’s CEO. “We’re really doing this to create a strong, vibrant, full-service healthcare system.” (In such cases, execs like to talk about “mergers of equals,” but that’s almost an oxymoron in reality;  there’s  almost always a dominant partner, and of course much  can be explained by executives’ financial rewards in a merger.)

Modern Healthcare says: “The plan calls for creating a yet-unnamed company that will include Emory’s Atlanta-based hospitals and post-acute-care assets as well as WellStar’s hospitals and post-acute care assets in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.”

 


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