Dive Brief:
- WellStar Health System and Emory Healthcare, an entity owned by Emory University, report that they are engaged in discussions on combining their resources to create a new, unified health system in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia region.
- The boards of each institution have approved a resolution to hold discussions for 45 days, and to use the opportunity to educate constituents and answer questions in preparation for committing to the plan. They say the design process for the new health system would take about a year to complete.
- The strategic intent is to create an innovative healthcare environment that combines the best of community-based care and the best of academic medicine, according to their joint press release.
Dive Insight:
There are still quite a few regulatory hurdles for these two organizations to jump through, not least of which is increased FTC scrutiny of potentially anti-competitive deals. WellStar is the state's largest non-profit system and any merger it proposes is going to be significant enough to catch federal attention. In addition, both hospitals will need approvals to merge from various partnerships that they are already involved in. WellStar leases its five hospitals from local hospital authorities, according to Modern Healthcare, and Trinity Health owns 49% of Emory's St. Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta.
If created, the new system would be governed by a board made up equally of members from both organizations, which currently have minimal patient overlap in adjacent territories.