Friday, July 10, 2009
Mercy CEO James May sees merger with Jewish as ‘terrific fit’
Kenwood hospital will extend Mercy into I-71 corridor
Business Courier of Cincinnati - by James Ritchie Staff Reporter

James May
The face of Greater Cincinnati’s hospital market continues to shift as Mercy Health Partners prepares to take over Jewish Hospital.

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati announced this week that it would sell the hospital to Mercy, which is part of Cincinnati-based Catholic Healthcare Partners.

Now Mercy CEO James May and other executives have the task of unraveling the hospital from the Health Alliance, of which it is a voting member, and incorporating it into their own system.
Mercy operates five hospitals, in Fairfield, Western Hills, Mount Airy, Anderson Township and Clermont County, along with outpatient and other health care-related facilities.

It’s a $180 million deal expected to take four to six months to complete. It will leave the once-dominant Health Alliance with only two voting members: the University of Cincinnati, on behalf of University Hospital; and Fort Hamilton Hospital. (The Health Alliance owns two other hospitals: the Drake Center, in Hartwell; and West Chester Medical Center.)

And it’s just one of many changes ongoing or planned in the Tri-State’s hospital industry.
Mercy itself plans to build a $200 million hospital in Green Township, to open in early 2014. Good Samaritan Hospital plans to open a new medical center/emergency facility near Interstate 74 before then, in fall 2010. And smaller hospitals throughout the region, including Deaconess Hospital near UC, are looking for partners – potentially nonprofit corporations – to help them stay afloat during difficult financial times.

May discussed Mercy’s plans for Jewish with Business Courier reporter James Ritchie. Excerpts follow.

Q: How will Jewish fit into Mercy’s strategy?
It’s an absolutely terrific fit. Where we start is, the Jewish Hospital campus and the services rendered here are outstanding. The team is a great team. The services will complement the services we provide on the east side, the north side and the west side.
The other issue is that we don’t service the I-71 corridor very well. This gives us a chance to reach a population that we don’t reach with Mercy Fairfield and Mercy Anderson.

Q: How long have you been thinking about that gap in service?
When we looked at our strategic plan and our markets, we were aware of this deficit some time ago and were trying to sort out how we would expand into this area. We didn’t have any firm plans, because we were focused on the West Side and Mount Orab and some other things. When this opportunity came up, we were delighted to pursue it.

Q: Will this affect plans for the new West Side hospital?
It affects them in a positive way in that it bolsters Mercy, makes us stronger in the market. From a financial position, we don’t see it impeding us on the West Side.

Q: How will you go about integrating Jewish Hospital with your system?
The Jewish Hospital gets its back-office support from the Alliance, and we would have to work hard to transition our human resources, information technology, finance and various other support functions. It’s like any marriage; you know it’s a good match, but you spend some time getting to know each other and working together effectively. We’d have to be ready to support them the day the deal closed. I think we’re well-situated to do that with the set of support services we have for our existing hospitals.

Q: In combining a Catholic organization with a Jewish one, how will the religious issues be handled?
The great thing is that we’re both faith-based organizations that believe the care of the patient comes first, body, mind and spirit. Those are the parallels in what we do. We adhere to the Catholic directives. But the impact on this situation is minimal because there are minimal women’s services at the Jewish Hospital.

Q: Will there be other changes at Jewish?
This is a great organization that does great work in cardiac, cancer, orthopedics and other surgical specialties. Our hope is not to make rampant changes but to help the organization grow and strengthen those programs over time.

Q: You have said you’ll keep Jewish’s current employees. Does that include its executive team?
We’re delighted that Aurora Lambert and her team will stay on and be the leaders of this enterprise.

jritchie@bizjournals.com | (513) 337-9442