Practice Management News

Atrium Health, Wake Forest Baptist Health Eye Hospital Merger

Atrium Health, Wake Forest Baptist Health, and Wake Forest University are negotiating a hospital merger deal that aims to combine the organizations by the end of 2019.

Hospital merger

Source: Thinkstock

By Jacqueline LaPointe

- North Carolina-based Atrium Health recently announced plans to engage in a hospital merger with Wake Forest Baptist Health and Wake Forest University to create a “next-generation academic healthcare system.”

In the announcement, Atrium Health reported that the three organizations signed a memorandum of understanding to merge. The memorandum launches a period of exclusive negotiations between the healthcare organizations, which Atrium Health intends to result in a final hospital merger agreement later this year.

The hospital merger deal would combine Atrium Health’s 42 hospitals and 900 care locations with the seven hospitals operated by Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Through the merger, the organizations intend to add a second campus to Wake Forest’s medical school in Charlotte and establish an innovation and research center.

“Phenomenal things can happen when like-minded partners, committed to the same transformative vision, come together in new ways to better serve our patients and communities,” Eugene A. Woods, president and CEO of Atrium Health, stated in the announcement.

“Just imagine the powerful possibilities to advance modern medicine by linking breakthrough science directly with our patients in a way that significantly enhances their cognitive and physical functioning – and allows them to live independently for longer,” he continued. “This is just one of the unlimited opportunities we see ahead. We can truly transform healthcare throughout North Carolina and far beyond – one patient at a time and one community at a time.”

The organizations anticipate the hospital merger deal to make care accessible and affordable for the nearly 6.8 million residents near the systems’ respective service areas.

By leveraging the capabilities and scale of both systems, the combined organization would be able to advance patient-centered research, implement a next-generation curriculum, and use population health analytics, stated Julie Ann Freischlag, MD, CEO of Wake Forest Baptist Health and dean of Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Atrium Health recently completed a hospital merger deal with Georgia-based Navicent Health in December 2018.

Last year, the health system also had plans to combine with UNC Health Care but the organizations decided to drop the deal that would create one of the largest health systems in the country with 50 hospitals and about $14 billion in combined annual operating revenue.