Updated, 10:50 a.m., April 25 and 8:40 p.m., April 24
PROVIDENCE – Citing a list of worries ranging from higher health care costs to patients, doctors and jobs being pipelined to Boston, Lifespan has announced an opposition campaign to the proposed acquisition of Care New England by Partners HealthCare.
The state’s largest health care network unveiled its Protect Rhode Island Health Care effort Wednesday.
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Along with the launch of a website, Lifespan is seeking signatures on an online petition opposing the merger. Information collected will be used to gauge public support for Lifespan’s position ahead of public hearings to be held by state officials on the proposed acquisition, Jane Bruno, Lifespan’s senior vice president of marketing and communications, said.
“People need to be educated and reach their own conclusions and own opinions,” Dr. Timothy J. Babineau, president and CEO of Lifespan, said.
The main message, according to the nonprofit, is that the creation of a “unified Rhode Island-based academic medical center” through a merger between Lifespan and CNE would be best for the state.
A merger between CNE and Boston-based Partners has the potential to mean higher bills for patients who travel to Boston, where Rhode Island’s caps on hospital reimbursements don’t apply, Lifespan contends, pointing to a report by Rhode Island’s Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner that names Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, both Partners-owned, as two of the most expensive facilities in Massachusetts and that a merger of CNE and Partners would be likely to increase health care costs in Rhode Island.
At the time Partners and CNE announced their agreement to merge, Care New England said it had an agreement to sell Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket to Prime Healthcare Foundation, the owner of Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket and Rehabilitation Hospital in North Smithfield. That deal later fell apart, and CNE shut down Memorial, keeping only limited medical services being provided there. Subsequent reporting indicated that disposing of Memorial was a precondition of Partners moving forward with the merger.
Lifespan also maintains that Partners plans to acquire CNE for free with no plans to invest in its infrastructure. Its board of directors, along with Babineau, say the proof is in a change of effective control application filed by Partners with the state’s Department of Health in January. Partners lists an expense total of $0 as the amount needed to acquire CNE.
“Partners intends to make no investment in CNE,” Lawrence Aubin, Lifespan’s chairman of the board of directors, said. “The decision to turn these assets over to Boston at zero cost is a travesty.”
Earlier this month, Dr. James E. Fanale, CNE’s president and CEO, said the number does not reflect Partners’ planned investments in Rhode Island, and that the terms of the deal are different from a transaction taking place between for-profit groups.
“When a not for profit acquires a not for profit, there’s no acquisition price,” Fanale said.
Partners knows of CNE’s needs, and the two sides have outlined CNE’s financial needs for the next 10 years, he and other CNE executives said.
“The thought that there would be zero dollars put into capital in an organization they’re acquiring that requires improvements doesn’t make any sense,” Fanale said.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Dr. Betsy Nabel, president and CEO of Brigham Health (the Partners corporate entity that would acquire Care New England), and Fanale said, “Together, we’ll deliver affordable and world-class care right here in Rhode Island. Our longtime affiliation at Kent Hospital proves we keep care local. Less then 1 percent of our patients are transferred to Brigham Health – and those are the sickest patients who require highly specialized care.”
In addition, the two said that the new entity is “exploring the potential for clinical expansion, including the development of new, lower-cost, community-based ambulatory care centers, which could create more clinical jobs.”
Lifespan, Partners and CNE met at the negotiating table for about six months in 2018. Talks were unsuccessful. But following the breakdown of discussions with Lifespan in the spring of that year CNE and Partners announced that the two of them had reached an agreement.
Last December, the two groups requested an expedited review of their application by Rhode Island state officials.
The application is still incomplete because officials have requested additional information, R.I. Department of Health spokesman Joseph Wendelken said.
Fanale said it’s not likely that CNE will pause the process to resume negotiations with Lifespan, but added that future talks are possible.
“At this time, because of the capital needs and the fact that we’ve been doing this now for almost two years, we’re pretty headstrong in trying to get our acquisition accomplished,” he said. “There’s a willingness post-transaction to sit down and discuss the potential of any future relationship. It’s just that at this point we don’t want to take our eye off the goal of getting our transaction completed.”
Rhode Islanders need to have a firm understanding of what transferring a large portion of the state’s health care resources to an out of state network could mean, Babineau said.
“We believe that the folks who live here, the folks who work here… are really in the best position to take the first pass at reconfiguring how health care looks here. We think the sequence is a little bit backwards at the moment,” he said.
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN staff writer. Email her at graham@PBN.com.
