Mergers, acquisitions and other affiliations are commonplace in the healthcare industry, but not every potential partnership pans out in the end.
Listed below are various hospital and health system transactions that failed so far this year, starting with those most recently covered by Becker's Hospital Review.
1. South County Hospital in Wakefield, R.I., and New Bedford, Mass.-based Southcoast Health System mutually decided to call off their exclusive affiliation talks in early September. The healthcare organizations did not specify why they called off partnership negotiations.
2. In late May, Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems called off a planned acquisition of Bert Fish Medical Center in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. The abandoned acquisition marks Bert Fish's second failed merger attempt during the past four years. Back in 2010, a circuit court judge in Florida overturned the merger of Bert Fish with Adventist Health System's Florida Hospital in Orlando because closed-door meetings surrounding the merger were in violation of the state's Sunshine Law. The Bert Fish Foundation has since agreed to waive its interest in the potential sale or lease of Bert Fish Medical Center in exchange for a payment to be determined through mediation.
3. McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, Ohio, and Cincinnati-based Mercy Health decided to end exclusive affiliation negotiations in late March, saying they couldn't reach a definitive deal because they "could not align on a set of common strategic priorities."
4. After evaluating different partnership structures for two years, UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and the nonprofit Dameron Hospital Association in Stockton, Calif., announced in late March that they will not move forward with affiliation plans. The hospitals decided not to form a joint venture due to various factors, including changing community needs and each organization's respective mission and strategic priorities.
5. In early February, issues stemming from a lengthy government review forced St. Louis-based Ascension Health and HCA Midwest Health System in Kansas City, Mo., to call off the sale of St. Joseph Medical Center, St. Mary’s Medical Center and several other subsidiaries to HCA Midwest. Both health systems were undergoing antitrust review from the Federal Trade Commission when they decided to cancel the transaction because it became "clear that a timely, supportive decision from the FTC [would] not be forthcoming." Since then, Ascension has been involved in several transactions, including collaborating with CHE Trinity Health, based in Livonia, Mich. to create a statewide clinically integrated network of healthcare providers, signing a nonbinding letter of intent with San Francisco-based Dignity Health and a subsidiary of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. to create a joint venture and forming a joint venture with Evolution Health, a division of Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Envision Healthcare.
6. Two prominent health systems located throughout the northern and western suburbs of Chicago — Winfield, Ill.-based Cadence Health and Rockford (Ill.) Health System —ended merger discussions in late January. Leaders did not divulge specific reasons for why a definitive merger deal wasn't reached other than "differences" in strategic and operational planning. Cadence Health and Chicago, Ill.-based Northwestern Memorial Healthcare have since finalized a merger that expands Northwestern Medicine, a fully integrated health system.