Dive Brief:
- RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University announced last week that they have signed a letter of intent to partner, which would create New Jersey’s largest academic healthcare system.
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RWJBarnabas Health is the state’s largest healthcare systems and Rutgers Health Group has about 1,000 Rutgers-employed physicians, dentists, psychologists, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals.
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The partnership will include clinical providers in 17 of New Jersey’s 21 counties and create a multi-specialty group of more than 2,500 practitioners.
Dive Insight:
The RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University partnership will create an academic healthcare system that will have a joint committee for strategic planning and oversight. They will remain separate corporations with Rutgers Health Group providing clinical services to RWJBarnabas Health.
RWJBarnabas is New Jersey’s largest private employer and provides care for five million people. The system has 11 acute care hospitals, three acute children’s hospitals, a pediatric rehabilitation hospital, as well as other facilities.
Rutgers and RWJBarnabas Health officials said they will soon begin to recruit academic, research and clinical practitioners for the new partnership.
The partnership is the latest activity in healthcare as health systems search for scale and look for ways to reduce overlapping services and costs. While this partnership doesn't rise to the level of a merger or acquisition, that's the avenue many health systems are taking.
The values of healthcare deals are up this year as megadeals have skyrocketed. PwC recently reported 10 megadeals in the second quarter valued at a total of $43.3 billion. In comparison, there has been an average of four megadeals per quarter since 2015.