Dive Brief:
- Trinity Health has announced a massive joint venture with Heritage Provider Network engaging its 37,000 physicians to provide care across Trinity's 86 hospitals.
- The agreement will see Trinity and Heritage build networks in different markets, focusing on streamlining the fragmented care patients receive from multiple providers. No financials on the deal were released, but there's little doubt that building out such a large risk-based network will be costly.
- "This joint venture allows us to rapidly expand our capabilities to contract with payer-partners for full-risk, capitated arrangements that will result in better health, better care and lower costs in the communities we serve," said Richard J. Gilfillan, MD, president and CEO of Trinity Health.
Dive Insight:
Even given the pressures healthcare systems face to join ACOs, taking a massive provider network like Heritage and combining it with an 86-hospital chain takes some guts. No matter how you slice it, this is a huge deal.
Heritage, through a variety of medical groups, helps care for more than 1 million people in California, Arizona and New York. It works with approximately 4,000 primary-care physicians and 33,000 specialists. Meanwhile, Trinity, one of the nation's largest Catholic health systems, runs 86 hospitals in 21 states as well as 128 facilities offering long-term care, assisted living and other services. It reported annual operating revenue of $13.6 billion for its fiscal year ended June 30.
With Trinity also recently announcing a merger with St. Francis, one has to wonder what the nonprofit titan has up its sleeve next.