The Augusta University Medical Center (Photo credit: Michael Holahan/Augusta University)ATLANTA – An Augusta University Health System (AUHS) – WellStar concern projected past period is successful enactment with nationalist trends toward health-care partnerships, experts said this week arsenic a fewer further details emerged astir the plan.
AUHS is simply a cardinal grooming installation for aesculapian residents and different aboriginal health-care providers. It houses the Medical College of Georgia, the state’s lone nationalist aesculapian school. WellStar, a non-profit wellness system, presently owns 9 hospitals successful the Atlanta region.
A three-page letter of intent precocious made nationalist states: “WellStar would go the sole firm subordinate of AUHS,” meaning the non-profit infirmary strategy would regenerate the existent not-for-profit corp that runs AUHS.
The AUHS holdings that would travel into WellStar’s power nether the projected transaction see a 632-bed hospital, the module signifier radical for the Medical College of Georgia, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation installation – which includes a 32-bed acute-care infirmary and a 52-bed rehabilitation installation – and different AUHS facilities and holdings, according to the missive of intent.
The missive besides outlines the expected benefits of the caller plan, including providing amended wellness attraction to underserved populations.
The concern would “expand the objective platform, including a caller state-of-the-art infirmary successful Columbia County,” according to the letter. AUHS had planned to physique a 100-bed installation in the eastbound Georgia county, and operation was slated to statesman this year.
While fewer different details of the projected concern person been made public, health-care experts accidental specified partnerships betwixt world aesculapian centers and infirmary systems are progressively communal crossed the country.
“In these days, a concern is perfectly necessary,” said Dr. Andrew Balas, a prof of wellness absorption and argumentation astatine Augusta University. “Becoming portion of a health system is an upside … due to the fact that a stand-alone infirmary is conscionable not a viable option in the agelong run.”
“The request for gross has created … innovations [or] a batch of originative concern arrangements,” echoed Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan deliberation vessel that measures hospitals’ societal responsibility. “The information that this is happening is not peculiarly surprising. … What whitethorn beryllium caller are the details.”
The Lown Institute ranked the WellStar infirmary strategy 2nd successful the state successful 2022 for the largest “fair stock surplus,” that is, for however overmuch its spending connected foundation attraction and assemblage concern exceeded its taxation exemptions. The infirmary strategy spent $144 cardinal much connected foundation attraction and assemblage concern than it received successful taxation breaks.
Some of that whitethorn beryllium due to the fact that Georgia has not expanded Medicaid, meaning hospitals present indispensable money much foundation attraction for uninsured patients than successful Medicaid-expansion states, Saini said. The infirmary strategy received a “B” people successful the Lown Institute’s social work index, which measures infirmary outcomes, worth and equity.
WellStar drew disapproval past twelvemonth erstwhile it announced it was closing 2 Atlanta-area hospitals and exigency rooms that served ample numbers of uninsured and Black patients. Many Democrats, among them gubernatorial campaigner Stacey Abrams, blamed those infirmary closures connected the state’s nonaccomplishment to grow Medicaid. At that time, WellStar said that Medicaid enlargement would not person been capable to support the 2 hospitals from closing.
The concern would extend WellStar’s existent world profile. The infirmary strategy has been a long-time protagonist of the Kennesaw State University School of Nursing. In 2003 a $3.1 million donation led KSU to sanction its College of Health and Human Services aft WellStar.
The projected concern might yield a caller Augusta University teaching field astatine WellStar’s ample Kennestone hospital, a December statement announcing the connection noted. This could assistance summation the Medical College’s capableness to bid caller doctors successful Georgia.
Multiple studies suggest that doctors and different health-care providers are much apt to signifier wherever they train, meaning that 1 solution to Georgia’s health-care workforce shortage is to summation the state’s grooming capacity.
“We anticipation determination volition beryllium a rational statement that is respectful and supportive of the university’s tripartite ngo of education, research, and service,” said Balas, who besides serves arsenic president of the Augusta University section of the American Association of University Professors. “Personally, I americium hopeful. … I deliberation it volition enactment retired fine.”
The concern volition request support from some the Board of Regents and the authorities Attorney General’s office. The Attorney General office’s reappraisal process volition see a public hearing. However, details astir the timeline are not yet available.
This communicative is disposable done a quality concern with Capitol Beat News Service, a task of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
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