SOUTH KINGSTOWN – In a health care landscape dominated by statewide, regional and national systems, South County Hospital stands out as the Ocean State's last remaining independent hospital.
This status has allowed the hospital to avoid losing local services to out-of-state partner facilities, said Aaron Robinson, president and CEO of parent company South County Health. But it also poses additional funding challenges in the state's financially turbulent health care environment.
“As a small, independent health system, we don’t have the scale that a lot of the larger health systems do to afford some of the modern technology,” Robinson said.
However, a less conventional partnership with several “strategic, AI, digital and clinical partners,” including a yet-to-be disclosed “top 10 national health care system,” may be what helps South County Hospital keep up with competitors while retaining its independence, Robinson said.
The potential partnership, which South County Health is exploring under a 120-day due diligence agreement announced late last month, would allow the hospital to “plug into one of the top health systems in the world – their platform, their databases, their algorithms and their insights into patient care,” Robinson said. “So you’re bringing all of that information to our clinicians in Rhode Island, and therefore patients in Rhode Island.”
Under the agreement, South County Health said in its announcement, the hospital will remain an independent, nonprofit system, and all future funding raised in South County will remain local.
Meanwhile, the hospital will gain a "significant long-term capital infusion” to support the integration of new digital and AI tools, as well as access to Epic, an electronic health record system used in many major Rhode Island and New England hospitals
Aside from financial challenges, the health system has also faced opposition from a citizens group, Save South County Hospital, a coalition of doctors, patients, community members and other medical practitioners.
Among those practitioners are oncologists who resigned from the hospital’s Cancer Center in August 2024 over “irreconcilable differences over issues directly affecting patient care.” The group also called for the resignation of Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kevin Charpentier and board of trustees Chairman Joseph Matthews and Robinson.
South County Health sued the advocacy group in March, alleging that it exposed confidential donor information to dissuade them from further contributions. Save South County Hospital called these allegations “baseless.”
Save South County Hospital did not respond to request for comment on the partnership that South County Hospital leaders are exploring.
Outside of this conflict, South County Hospital also saw a downgrade in its Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, dropping from an "A" rating in 2024 to a "C" in 2025, nationwide nonprofit The Leapfrog Group determined in a report released last month.
Robinson attributed this downgrade to “a large shift from inpatient to outpatient” services at the hospital, which he said skews how Leapfrog determines its ratings.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services meanwhile awarded South County Hospital 5-stars rating for patient survey and 4.5 stars for quality of patient care in its April report, Robinson said.
But “we’re very focused on getting back to Bs and As as it relates to those scores,” from Leapfrog, he said.
South County Health explored “other, more traditional partnerships” as it sought support, Robinson said, but the current partnership “really emerged as the most attractive option” in alignment with the system’s strategic plan.
Robinson said the agreement also gives the hospital an opportunity to lead the charge for sustained independence at similar health systems.
“I would call this a very transformational partnership,” Robinson said. “This is not what you would call a traditional health system partnership, and I think what's encouraging to me will be encouraging to others. It’s a new model that may give other systems, smaller community hospitals in peril – certainly in Rhode Island and across the nation as well – some hope ... (that they can) benefit from the scale without a traditional merger.”
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
The merger details seem good