With a brand new title and a shared mission, Georgia’s solely public medical faculty on Friday introduced an settlement with an Atlanta-based well being care system that its companions say will enhance healthcare statewide and the variety of educated physicians to assist ship it.
Augusta College Well being System, which incorporates the 205-year-old Medical School of Georgia, and Wellstar Well being System now will comprise Wellstar MCG Well being, whose shared assets are anticipated to develop medical coaching, care and analysis all through the state.
“As you all know, AU and MCG are unimaginable property for our state, and I’m assured that the perfect days of our establishment are forward of us,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp mentioned Friday throughout a digital press convention, joined by AU President Dr. Brooks Keel, Wellstar President and CEO Candie Saunders and former Gov. Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the College System of Georgia.
Boards representing all three our bodies authorized the settlement this week. Pending regulatory approvals, the partnership is predicted to be finalized in late summer time.
This is the deal:Augusta College Well being, Wellstar letter of intent made public
Unwanted side effects?What the AU Well being – Wellstar merger means for Augusta
How they bought to right here
AU Well being and Wellstar signed a letter of intent to pursue the settlement in December. Based on the letter, the deal “would develop the medical platform, together with a state-of-the-art hospital in Columbia County, Georgia utilizing the latest expertise and tools to arrange future well being care professionals to apply within the altering well being care surroundings … .”
AU emerged from a years-long authorized tangle towards rival healthcare teams to win the proper to ascertain Columbia County’s first hospital.
Underneath the settlement – which Keel emphasised was “not a sale, not a takeover” – Wellstar will assume administration of AU Well being System.
All roads result in growth
The deal paves the best way for MCG to ascertain a long-coveted medical campus in Atlanta. For the previous a number of years, MCG college students have carried out medical rotations at Wellstar Kennestone, Wellstar’s flagship hospital in Marietta.
Elevated entry to all of Wellstar’s hospitals will enable MCG to quickly enhance the sizes of its medical courses, in a state that has been battling a scarcity of healthcare professionals.
The deal is just not with out its critics. When Wellstar closed two of its Atlanta-area hospitals in 2022 that served lower-income communities, the transfer appeared to run counter to beforehand said commitments to develop entry to healthcare.
“Quite a lot of the language round bettering efficiencies, reducing value, bettering high quality, sound nice, however truly hardly ever come to fruition,” Dr. Harry Heiman, professor of public well being at Georgia State College, informed The Augusta Chronicle in January. “It is extra a difficulty round consolidation of companies, and bettering alternatives to barter with payers, and develop service provision to areas the place healthcare nonetheless is kind of worthwhile.”
Whereas the merger “would develop Wellstar’s market share within the Atlanta space, Columbia County and different areas of the state,” Dr. William Custer, director of Georgia State College’s Heart for Well being Companies Analysis, additionally informed The Chronicle in January: “Focus of (the) well being system’s market share … results in will increase in costs between 7(%) and 9% with no enhance in high quality of care.”
