Dive Brief:
- Trinity Health will sell St. Joseph Mercy Port Huron hospital to Prime Healthcare Services based in Ontario, California.
- This is one of several pending or potential deals under consideration by Trinity in an effort to divest stressed assets, according to analysts.
- Trinity is selling "stressed assets" to bolster finances while making investments in growth markets, such as Connecticut, according to Moody's Investors Services. In fact, Trinity just announced its merger with Hartford-Connecticut-based Saint Francis Hospital, where it will invest $275 million over five years on facility upgrades, equipment and EHR conversions.
Dive Insight:
Prime has been expanding and this is its latest acquisition. The company has two other pending deals for Trinity hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Prime will invest $30 million in the Port Huron hospital, which had operating losses of $2.5 million over the past year.
As previously reported in HealthcareDive, state hospital mergers and acquisitions started to gain steam in 2002, as per a Crain's report. And Moody's reported in January that the healthcare industry would continue consolidation in 2015.
In Jnauary, Barry Ronan, president and CEO of Western Maryland Health System, told FierceHealthcare he predicted forms of consolidation that allowed small-to-midsized systems to maintain their independence. "I'm hearing more and more interest in strategic regional organizations and alliances and I expect greater momentum during 2015."