St. Luke’s Hospital, a 314-bed facility in northwest Ohio, may be considering a merger with another hospital group in its region due to increasing operating losses.
According to a recent report in the Toledo Blade, St. Luke’s acknowledged an operating loss of $8.8 million last year, much of which owes to its exclusion from “lucrative insurance contracts.”
Dan Wakeman, St. Luke’s president and chief executive officer, told the Blade that unless the hospital can negotiate better health insurance contracts with insurance providers, a merger or affiliation might be necessary.
St. Luke’s was removed from ProMedica Health System’s Paramount Health Care network eight years ago. Wakeman said negotiations with other insurance companies have yielded low-paying reimbursement contracts that aren’t enough to cover costs.
“It has to do with how much leverage you have on the market,” he told the Blade. “We happen to be a casualty of the marketplace.”
The most likely merger options for St. Luke’s would be with Toledo, Ohio-based health systems ProMedica Health or Mercy Health Partners.