Capella Healthcare signs letter of intent to acquire Lourdes Health Network in Pasco
Lourdes Health Network is on track to become part of the Tennessee-based Capella Healthcare.
Capella has signed a letter of intent with Lourdes and Ascension — Lourdes’ parent organization — to acquire the Pasco health system.
The news was announced this week. “We believe becoming part of Capella Healthcare is right for Lourdes and the families we’ve been privileged to serve for nearly 100 years,” said John Serle , president and CEO of Lourdes Health Network, in a statement.
“Our community can be confident that during this period of transition our associates, physicians and volunteers remain committed to delivering the same type of safe, high-quality, holistic, compassionate care they’ve come to expect at Lourdes,” he said.
Representatives for Ascension and Capella declined to provide a timeline for the new partnership. In a statement, officials said no more information would be released until a definitive agreement was in place.
Lourdes has been in the market for a new partner for months. Ascension is moving to a model of “regional clinically integrated systems of care,” with a focus on larger metro areas with clusters of hospitals and facilities, and Lourdes’ size and location — it’s relatively small, with the next-closest Ascension hospital in Lewiston — means that’s not a good fit, a Lourdes spokeswoman told the Herald in January.
Lourdes has been part of Ascension Health since 2002.
Ascension is the biggest nonprofit health system in the country and the largest Catholic health system in the world, with 1,900 hospitals and sites.
Capella is a privately-held company that owns and/or operates 13 acute care and specialty hospital facilities in six states. That includes Capital Medical Center in Olympia and Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville, Ore.
Lourdes has a long history as a faith-based health network. Its presence in the Tri-Cities dates back to when the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet arrived in Pasco in 1916.
Ascension and Capella both “have expressed support for maintaining (Lourdes’) faith-based heritage,” the statement said.
Ascension’s Lewiston hospital also is set to become part of Capella. A similar letter of intent for St. Joseph Regional Medical Center also was signed.
“Capella Healthcare already has a presence in the Pacific Northwest, and we’re confident that this change in ownership would give Lourdes and St. Joseph the ability to serve the Pasco and Lewiston communities well into the future,” said Robert J. Henkel, executive vice president of Ascension and president and CEO of Ascension Health, in the statement.
Michael Wiechart, Capella president and CEO, added that his company’s goals include “working together with healthcare professionals and community leaders to ensure the continued provision of high quality local healthcare and to expand services.”
“Capella is committed to providing outstanding community-based healthcare, as Lourdes and St. Joseph’s have done for many years,” he said in the statement. “We are honored to have been selected as their partner for the future, and do not take likely this trust that is being placed with us. ...We look forward to getting to know both of these organizations better, as well as the communities they serve, as we conduct our research.”
If the acquisition goes through, it will be the second major new partnership in the local health care scene in as many years. In 2014, Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland announced it was affiliating with Providence Health & Services, a large Catholic health network that operates in five states.
This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 11:07 AM.