Three northeast Ohio health systems have created a for-profit company to aid the success of joint ventures in a competitive healthcare market.
EMH Healthcare in Elyria, Ohio, Parma Community General Hospital in Parma, and Southwest General Health System in Middleburg Heights formed the Community Health Collaborative in late June. The three systems have equal ownership and control of CHC.
According to Frank Lordeman, the newly-named president of CHC, each health system will remain independent, but the for-profit collaborative will provide member hospitals with “higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness” by allowing them to work together on specific projects.
Lordeman said opportunities are already being developed in the areas of information technology, supply chain management and physician integration.
[See also: Northwest Ohio hospitals form quality collaborative.]
Don Sheldon, MD, president and CEO of EMH Healthcare, said his health system could no longer operate in isolation and expect to retain the necessary strength required to meet its community mission.
"This collaborative allows us to remain autonomous, remain responsive to our community and to achieve the critical mass necessary for future success," Sheldon said.
Each system will continue to maintain existing relationships with other healthcare entities, said Terry Deis, president and CEO of Parma Community General Hospital.
“This collaborative is not a replacement for existing relationships, and does not preclude the formation of new ones,” he insisted. “It does, however, give us new and exciting opportunities to work together as healthcare systems which are similarly sized, similarly positioned and which face similar challenges.”
Lordeman said CHC’s focus is not merely to strengthen the hospital systems, but to work with physicians and other providers in the region to assist them in strengthening their practices.
Tom Selden, president and CEO of Southwest General, affirmed that the strength of a hospital is closely tied to the vigor of the physicians in its community.
“That is why we made sure our new organization was structured to not only help support these practitioners, but also to closely integrate them with our new collaborative," Selden said.
Southwest General is a private, not-for-profit, 354-bed facility serving southwestern Cuyahoga, eastern Lorain and northern Medina counties. Parma Hospital is a not-for-profit, 321-bed community hospital in Cuyahoga County, while EMH Healthcare is a 434-bed hospital system with main campuses in Elyria, Amherst and Avon.