OH Hospitals Launch Non-profit Collaborative

Three Cleveland-area hospitals have formed a non-profit collaborative that they say lets them pool resources while maintaining autonomy in their own communities.

EMH Healthcare, Parma Community General Hospital, and Southwest General Health System have announced jointly that they will share equal ownership of the newly created Community Health Collaborative, which they said is expected to improve the hospitals' buying power, and other efficiencies, and create a "base camp" for collaborative ventures among the three systems.

"We can no longer operate in isolation and expect to retain the necessary strength required to meet our mission to our community," Don Sheldon, MD, president/CEO of Elyria, OH-based EMH Healthcare said in the joint announcement. "This collaborative allows us to remain autonomous, remain responsive to our community, and to achieve the critical mass necessary for future success."

Frank Lordeman, a former COO at Cleveland Clinic, was named president/CEO of CHC, which has already begun developing information technology, supply chain management, and physician integration projects.

"This collaborative is not a replacement for existing relationships, and does not preclude the formation of new ones," Terry Deis, president/CEO of Parma Community Hospital said in the announcement. "It does, however, give us new and exciting opportunities to work together as healthcare systems which are similarly sized, similarly positioned and which face similar challenges."

Tom Selden, president/CEO of Middleburg Heights-based Southwest General, said the collaborative will work with physicians in the region to strengthen their practices. "We know the strength of a hospital is closely tied to the strength of the physicians in its community. That is why we made sure our new organization was structured to not only help support these practitioners, but also to closely integrate them with our new collaborative," Selden said.

The three hospitals did not provide details about the budget, expenses, or staffing for CHC but Sheldon said the object of the collaborative is to save money, not spend it, and that a small core CHC staff will operate between the three hospitals and work with existing staff.