St. Vincent, Conway Regional In Discussions; QualChoice Deal Closes

St. Vincent Health System of Little Rock and Conway Regional Health System are discussing an “exclusive strategic affiliation,” the two groups said.

The discussions may take months before a final agreement can be reached.

Both hospital groups said that forming a partnership would strengthen their market presence and create a platform for improved efficiencies.

“It is important to note this will not be a sale or acquisition,” a statement from St. Vincent said. “Both St. Vincent and Conway Regional will retain their autonomy, individual identities and separate corporate governance structures. The affiliation is intended to be structured in a way that will bring value to both organizations and the communities they serve.”

In October of 2013, the Conway Regional Health System board of directors announced its intention to explore strategic affiliation proposals from various health care organizations. The Conway group said St. Vincent’s was the “most aligned with the needs and vision” of Conway Regional.

“During this process we evaluated a number of different proposals from multiple health care providers keeping foremost in mind the mission of this organization, which is to provide high quality, compassionate health care to our community,” said said Jim Lambert, President & CEO of Conway Regional Health System. “Ultimately, we felt an affiliation with St. Vincent Health System would best enable us to achieve our mission and goals in an increasingly challenging health care environment.”

“Their proposal not only accounted for our desire to continue delivering compassionate care to our communities, but was also respectful of the important role we have as a community-based health system,” Lambert added. “Obviously there are many details to work out from this point but we feel positive about the possibilities of harnessing our collective strength.”

“We are pleased that the Conway Regional board selected St. Vincent for exclusive strategic affiliation discussions. Our missions and goals are aligned and a strategic alliance between our two systems positions each of us to better serve the people of Arkansas,” said Peter Banko, President & CEO, St. Vincent. “Conway Regional has been faithfully serving Conway and the surrounding communities for several decades. We want to work with them to preserve and expand their offerings and present an even stronger offering of services to assure the availability of high quality health care close to home.”

QUALCHOICE SIGN-OFF
On a related note, a subsidiary of St. Vincent’s parent company called CollabHealth has closed on a series of stock-purchase agreements to acquire QualChoice Holdings, Inc.

The Arkansas Insurance Department (AID) approved the acquisition during a hearing earlier this week.

The CollabHealth-QualChoice deal was announced in early April. QualChoice CEO Mike Stock said he saw potential for new jobs in the merger.

“CHI – Catholic Health Initiatives, is one of the largest providers of health care in the country. They’re in 18 states. They have a plan to expand their footprint in financing health care and they want to use QualChoice as the administrative center for doing that by running all their administrative operations through this,” Stock said in an earlier interview. “That’s the plan down the road. I think there will be expansion here.”

No substantial changes in QualChoice operations or in provider network participation are anticipated by the change in ownership, the companies said.

Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, operates St. Vincent Health System and owns CollabHealth.