Community Health Network and Johnson Memorial Hospital plan to spend $14 million to build a medical office building and outpatient center in Bargersville. The 70,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to be completed in mid-2013.
The new agency owned by ad industry veterans is full service with an emphasis on branding.
In spite of all the consolidation lately among hospitals, Community Health CEO Bryan Mills says the future of hospital systems will hinge more on partnerships like the one Community struck last week on its rehab hospital.
Indiana’s largest and busiest medical system committed 19 preventable errors last year at its hospitals in Indianapolis and other cities, three fewer than in 2009, according to a report released Monday.
Community Health Network plans to move its inpatient rehabilitation facility from its east-side hospital to a new $23 million, 60-bed facility in the Castleton neighborhood.
Indianapolis-based Westview Hospital might be on the hook for $160,000 because its advisers used a fax machine to tell Lehman Brothers it was canceling a financial agreement.
As part of its agreement to add Westview Hospital to its system, Community Health Network will assume $10 million in debt, spend $7.5 million on upgrades, and help open an outpatient center in Speedway, the two hospitals announced Tuesday morning.
Community Health Network has embarked on a strategy to become a low-cost, high-output machine in order to survive the coming harsh economic environment that an aging population and expanded health care coverage promises for hospitals.
Over the last three years, all major hospitals in Indianapolis have been active in hiring physicians. Competition was especially intense for cardiologists.
Some health care system are finally allowing online scheduling.
Tony Lennen became president of Community Hospital South in 2009, overseeing a 50-bed expansion that was completed last summer, giving the hospital 150 private rooms. The facility, located along the line between Marion and Johnson counties, competes against nearby facilities run by Franciscan St. Francis Health, Indiana University Health and Johnson Memorial Hospital.
Community Health Network won a three-way race for a close partnership with Johnson Memorial Hospital, besting Franciscan St. Francis and Indiana University Health.
Construction is set to begin soon on Community Health Pavilion, a three-story, 55,000-square-foot medical building to be built on six acres at 7910 E. Washington St.
Community Health Network wooed Dr. Robert J. Goulet Jr. to join its breast-surgery team from the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center. The move fits nicely with Community’s focus on breast-care services and the economics of health care.
The form an alliance would take is not clear, but Westview looked for additional resources from city’s four major hospital systems.
In this new age of health care, ushered in by President Obama’s signing in March of a sweeping health care reform law, health care players are encouraged to remove the gloves if they want to reap the benefits of reform.
Indianapolis-area hospitals spent billions on construction in the past decade and increasingly tried to poach patients from one another’s territories. Yet last year—one of the worst economically in recent history—21 of 26 hospitals still were able to show operating profits.
Community Health now has about 550 physicians, either on its payroll or committed through integration contracts, who have some of their pay hinge on measures of quality and communication. CEO Bryan Mills says the hospital system is looking to add even more.
Monroe Hospital in Bloomington is the latest target in the statewide buildup by hospital systems. St. Vincent Health, St.
Francis and at least one other system have all had talks in the past month with Monroe.
The scramble by local hospitals to form their physicians and facilities into “clinically integrated” networks
that can do business with employers and health insurers has another huge motivating factor: Beginning January 2012, they can
also do business with Medicare, the massive federal program for seniors.
