Flaget Hospital to be part of St. Joseph, U of L, Jewish Hospital merger
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Flaget Memorial Hospital’s parent company announced Thursday that it intends to merge its Kentucky hospitals with University of Louisville Hospital and Jewish Hospital under an agreement approved Thursday by the University of Louisville’s board of trustees.
The merger would create a health care organization that includes more than 3,000 physicians and 15,000 employees in Kentucky with combined annual revenues of more than $2 billion.
The merger includes Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives, which operates Saint Joseph Health Systems in Kentucky (which includes Flaget Memorial, Saint Joseph Hospital and St. Joseph East in Lexington, and hospitals in London, Mount Sterling, Nicholasville and Floyd County); the University of Louisville Hospital/James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and Jewish Hospital and St. Mary’s HealthCare/Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services in Louisville.
The merger also includes VNA Nazareth Home Care, formerly known as Nazareth Home Health and later as Caritas Home Health, a home health services organization that originally had its main headquarters in Bardstown.
The merger will combine three non-profit organizations, including the UofL Hospital, which is a non-profit organization that is operated separately from the unversity. The terms of the merger include a capital investment exceeding $300 million to be contributed by Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), which would be spent on unspecified infrastructure needs.
According to a Saint Joseph Health System press release, the new health care organization is already working on plans to deal with the changes brought by health care reform. Serving areas of Kentucky that are medically underserved, and recruiting and training medical professionals will also be priorities.
Many details of the merger — including what the new organization will be called, and where it will be headquartered — are not yet known. The merger will require a variety of approvals from regulatory agencies as well as the Federal Trade Commission.
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