Hospital Giants Vie for Patients in Effort to Fend Off New Rivals<br />Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives said they planned to become a national chain of Catholic hospitals and clinics that spanned 28 states.<br />In announcing their planned merger earlier this month, Dignity<br />and Catholic Health Initiatives, which declined requests for interviews, said they plan to use the merger to amplify their investments in “community-based care,” which they describe as “a variety of outpatient and virtual care settings closer to home” as well as programs aimed at people with chronic health conditions<br />Two Midwestern systems want to combine to become one of the country’s largest nonprofits,<br />and Ascension, which is already the nation’s largest nonprofit health system, is said to be in talks to become even bigger, according to The Wall Street Journal.<br />“Coming together will allow us to be better prepared to weather the storms,” acknowledged Jim Skogsbergh, the chief executive of Advocate Health Care, which had<br />been foiled by antitrust officials in its earlier attempt to merge with another Chicago-area health system before deciding to combine with Aurora Health Care.<br />The mergers allow these systems to become much larger “and have much stronger tentacles into the patient population<br />they are trying to reach,’ said W. Kenneth Marlow, a health care lawyer with Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis.<br />Dignity and Catholic Health Initiatives, for example, estimate about $500 million in efficiencies through their merger,<br />and many of the groups point to a larger scale being necessary to pay for the sophisticated computer systems needed to better oversee patients.<br />The changing industry dynamics have also caused some of the nation’s largest chains of<br />for-profit hospitals, like Tenet Healthcare and Community Health Systems, to struggle.
