As if Dr. John Murphy did not have enough to worry about on the regulatory front ”“ given who knows how many local, state and federal agencies touching his Western Connecticut Health Network ”“ add another he perhaps did not expect to get to know in taking the job a few years back.
Hello, Federal Trade Commission.
Earlier in April, Norwalk Hospital and Danbury Hospital floated the idea of an affiliation or outright merger under Western Connecticut Health, which runs both the latter hospital and New Milford Hospital.
Any such deal would amount to a spinal fusion of sorts for Fairfield County”™s health system, creating a north-south access of health services supported by myriad physicians offices attached to the three hospitals.
Any such merger would leave Stamford Hospital standing as the last solo acute-care hospital in Fairfield County, with Bridgeport Hospital and Greenwich Hospital part of Yale New Haven Health System (which now is in the process of acquiring the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven), and St. Vincent”™s Medical Center part of Ascension Health.
Generally, hospitals have sought such deals in a bid to cut costs by pooling their purchasing power and paring expenses through shared services.
Only this past month, however, two Illinois hospitals abandoned plans to merge after a federal judge issued an injunction sought by the FTC, which said the deal would limit competition and so raise health-care costs.
Greenwich Hospital CEO Frank Corvino acknowledges Yale New Haven had taken a look at Norwalk Hospital in the past with an eye on a combination, as part of its own scouting for expansion opportunities.
At St. Vincent”™s Medical Center in Bridgeport, meanwhile, Dr. Stuart Marcus is now president, freeing up time for CEO Susan Davis to shuttle between Bridgeport and Florida, where she is helping out an Ascension facility in Jacksonville. Only in March, Ascension announced it would absorb six hospitals in California.
The Fairfield County Business Journal scheduled a roundtable on hospitals and health care for April 26, with Western Connecticut Health”™s Murphy among the featured panelists.
He, Corvino, Davis and others face dizzying questions these days as the Obama administration wheels the gurney of health reform through the federal and state agencies charged with implementing it.
We”™ve been known to ask some tough questions ”“ but nothing like the FTC”™s interrogators.
