In what may well be the latest fad in hospital consolidation, two not-for-profit health systems located across the country from one another are seeking to link up — this time, to create a system with roughly $11 billion in revenue.
UnityPoint Health and Presbyterian Healthcare Services announced Thursday they’ve inked a letter of intent to explore a merger. Hospital mergers often involve partners in the same region so they can gain leverage with insurers, but in this case, UnityPoint is in the Midwest, whereas all nine of Presbyterian’s hospitals are several states away in New Mexico.
The deal illustrates not only health systems’ insatiable desire to get bigger in a tough operating environment, but their evolving strategy for doing so. Antitrust regulators have sunk deals involving partners they said would command too much market share in a given region, so hospitals are doing the next-best thing: seeking partners in far-flung states.
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