Mercy and St. Anthony鈥檚 Medical Center have entered into an affiliation agreement, hospital officials said Monday.
While details of the agreement are still being hashed out, Mercy has agreed to a 鈥渟ubstantial capital commitment鈥 at St. Anthony鈥檚, Winthrop Reed, vice chair of St. Anthony鈥檚 board, told the Post-Dispatch.
For St. Anthony鈥檚, the agreement means one of the last remaining independent hospitals in the St. 亚洲无码 area will become part of a much-larger health care system. For Chesterfield-based Mercy, with 43 hospitals in four states, the move grows its market share in St. 亚洲无码, where it already has four hospitals.
The hospitals, in a statement, said they hope to complete the agreement 鈥渢his spring.鈥 It will need regulatory approval, Reed said.
When asked which organization would be in control, or have the most board representation, Donn Sorensen, a Mercy executive, said Mercy would have representatives on St. Anthony鈥檚 board and vice versa.
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No decisions have been made on potential leadership changes, and St. Anthony鈥檚 will retain its name.
Sorensen said Mercy executives will soon begin a 鈥渓istening tour鈥 in which they will call on employees, residents and business leaders to map a long-term strategy for the hospital.
Ideas generated from those meetings will influence the kind of 鈥渃apital commitment鈥 that will be made at the hospital, Reed said.
Sorensen said the two organizations had been talking for months, and an appealing factor for Mercy was St. Anthony鈥檚 location in south St. 亚洲无码 County. Mercy鈥檚 footprint is mainly west along Highway 40 (Interstate 64) and south near Festus.
Others say the deal makes sense beyond the geographic fit for Mercy and their shared Catholic identity.
鈥淢ercy鈥檚 culture has long encouraged innovation in care delivery and has been highly focused on improving quality, including reducing infections. St. Anthony鈥檚 is a highly efficient provider of inpatient services, despite serving a complex patient population. The right mix of these could yield better value for the community,鈥 said 亚洲无码e Probst, executive director of the .
Mercy, one of the nation鈥檚 largest Catholic health care systems, reported revenue of $5 billion in its fiscal year 2016.
St. Anthony鈥檚 reported revenue of $461 million for the year ended June 30, 2016.
If the deal goes through, this will be the second time the two have joined forces.
About 17 years ago, St. Anthony鈥檚 split from what was then the area鈥檚 second largest health care network, Unity Health System.
Unity was formed in 1995 by leaders of St. Luke鈥檚 in Chesterfield, St. Anthony鈥檚 and what is now known as Mercy. At the time, health care executives thought 鈥渙nly those hospitals nested in large corporations could survive government efforts to constrain costs,鈥 the Post-Dispatch reported on Nov. 21, 2000.
Those various organizations banded together to negotiate with insurers as one entity and managed a physician practice.
But the relationship didn鈥檛 work out, and St. Anthony鈥檚 was the first to exit the relationship five years later. At the time, St. Anthony鈥檚 said it no longer made sense to pay for physician practices and services that did not directly benefit its South County campus.
