CHI Franciscan, Virginia Mason complete merger, unveil new name for joint health system
The new year started with the completion of a planned merger between Tacoma-based CHI Franciscan and Seattle-based Virginia Mason health systems.
The agreement was signed Dec. 21, and according to the health systems, took effect Jan. 1.
The joint operating company will operate as Virginia Mason Franciscan Health as part of CommonSpirit Health, based in Chicago. CHI Franciscan became part of CommonSpirit Health’s network in 2019 when CHI (Catholic Health Initiatives) and Dignity Health aligned to form CommonSpirit.
The hospitals of the newly combined system will retain their current names, with the new system offering a combined 11 hospitals, nearly 300 sites of care and nearly 5,000 physicians and affiliated providers.
Both organizations will maintain corporate offices in Seattle and Tacoma.
In an emailed statement to The News Tribune, a media representative for the new health system said: “A thoughtful integration process is underway, and we anticipate this process to take up to 24 months. Should there be any changes on corporate locations, they will be communicated directly with those that are impacted.”
The new operation initially will retain the two legacy system leaders, CHI Franciscan’s Ketul Patel, who also is president of the Pacific Northwest Division of CommonSpirit Health, and Virginia Mason’s Gary Kaplan.
Further structure/executive organization details of the agreement were not disclosed, citing confidentiality.
“Both of our legacy organizations had a history of working collaborating together,” Patel told The News Tribune in a phone interview with the two CEOs on Monday. “We had a radiation oncology relationship, we opened up a joint venture OB unit in downtown Seattle.”
One location that didn’t come along as part of the new venture is Virginia Mason Memorial in Yakima, whose board of directors in October voted to end its affiliation with Virginia Mason.
The hospital is now operating independently as Yakima Valley Memorial and is the city’s sole hospital.
The two CEOs on Monday would not offer a number of potential cuts that could result from the merger.
“The strategic plan is really not predicated on significant numbers of layoffs,” Kaplan said. “Unlike, perhaps other consolidations you may have watched or be familiar with, we’re focused on growth ...
“We’re excited we’ll be announcing our new leadership team in the coming weeks. And and I think you’ll see lots of opportunities for growth and very little disruption in jobs or in services that patients are currently receiving.”
“We believe that as the two organizations are now together, we will continue to be able to grow as a new organization and actually create more sites of care and just take the world-class programs that we collectively have together and scale them into different locations,” Patel said.
Kaplan also noted the changes the merger has brought in operating as one system.
“Virginia Mason will not become Catholic. And as such, we will not be subject to the ethical and religious directives of the Catholic Church,” he said Monday.
He acknowledged that changes to align with some of those same directives were made to allow the merger to happen.
“As part of this coming together and reaching an agreement, Virginia Mason will no longer be providing elective pregnancy terminations,” Kaplan said Monday. “And we will no longer participate in Washington State’s Death with Dignity process. Those two now prohibited services, were previously very, very few in number, rarely done at Virginia Mason.”
He added, “We will continue to provide the full range of women’s health care with the aforementioned exception. We will continue to provide full range of LGBTQ services, which we’re very proud of. And we will continue to provide the full range of end-of-life and palliative care services, with the exception noted.”
Advance directives including do-not-resuscitate orders will be honored, he said.
Not everyone is convinced the changes will go as planned.
“NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is deeply concerned about discriminatory restrictions to abortion and reproductive care, LGTBQ care and end-of-life care that the Virginia Mason CHI Franciscan merger poses,” said Lillian Lanier, organizing and political director for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, in an emailed response to The News Tribune about the merger.
The group has been among those critical of the merger plans and the growth of Catholic-guided operations at more hospitals in the state.
“For months, we have heard from concerned community members who fear they will no longer be able to access the services they need at Virginia Mason, and will instead have to travel long distances or incur increased costs to receive basic health care,” Lanier said. “This merger comes at the expense of patient care.”
Kaplan told The News Tribune on Monday, “If patients choose to access services that we don’t provide, we will help them easily access those services in the community, which has been the case historically and will continue to be the case.”
“The physician patient relationship is the most important relationship that occurs in health care,” he said, “and we believe strongly that patients should be fully aware of all of their choices.”
As for the future, Kaplan envisions the system’s medical sites to now have “a broader platform. We look forward to being a pilot site, a test bed, an innovation hub for CommonSpirit Health nationally,” ultimately creating “a state-of-the-art health care system that is truly consumer driven.”
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 12:03 PM.
