PROVIDENCE — Lawrence A. Aubin, chairman of Lifespan Corp.’s board of directors, announced today that the company’s talks with Partners HealthCare and Care New England, begun in February, have ended without an agreement.
“Lifespan worked creatively and tirelessly toward a potential partnership with Partners HealthCare and Care New England. Unfortunately, Partners Healthcare and Lifespan could not reach an agreement and talks have ended,” Aubin said in statement Monday morning.
The three began talks in the winter, to explore how the health care providers might work together to strengthen patient care delivery in Rhode Island, creating a national health care model in the process, the companies announced in a joint statement at the time.
The partnership stood to align the market power of the state’s two largest health care systems, all its hospitals and much of its health care infrastructure.
“Despite today’s announcement that current discussions between Lifespan and Partners HealthCare are not moving forward, our relationship with Lifespan will continue to be one of critical importance given our collective efforts to provide high quality care for all of our patients,” said Care New England spokesman James Beardsworth.
Beardsworth said the development has no effect on CNE’s plans to merge with Partners.
“We remain focused on the process well underway to finalize regulatory filings and ultimately, gain approval for our acquisition by Partners, which will serve to strengthen the health care landscape here in Rhode Island and the region,” Beardsworth said.
Richard Copp, spokesman for Partners HealthCare, reiterated that the CNE/Partners merger plans were not affected by the development.
“While our current discussions with Lifespan are not moving forward, we are hopeful that in the years ahead we can continue to work collaboratively with them to ensure that patients in Rhode Island have access to excellent care,” Copp said.
In August, Brown University signed a memorandum of understanding with CNE and Partners formalizing their collaboration through a clinical, medical education and biomedical research affiliation following the planned merger of the two health systems.
The memorandum establishes Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School as the primary academic research and teaching institution of record for Partners-CNE in Rhode Island. The university also has an academic affiliation with Lifespan.
“Brown is committed to both of our health system partners, Lifespan and Care New England. Brown and Lifespan have a long-standing academic affiliation agreement, which designates Rhode Island Hospital as the principal teaching hospital for Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School. Two additional teaching hospitals in the Lifespan system also are affiliated with Brown. We value this relationship and do not regard it as being changed in light of the productive conversations Brown is engaged in with Partners Healthcare,” Paxson said.
She noted Brown is pursuing its own agreement with Partners.
“We are making progress on developing a formal affiliation with Partners that will advance Brown’s long-standing goal of providing the highest quality of patient care, physician training and biomedical innovation to Rhode Island. It remains our hope to someday bring all of our health system relationships together into a united academic medical center,” Paxson said
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Bergenheim@PBN.com.
