by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | January 04, 2022
LifePoint has completed its acquisition of Kindred Healthcare and launched ScionHealth
LifePoint Health has completed its acquisition of Kindred Healthcare and launched a separate healthcare system, ScionHealth.
Announced in June and
in the works since October, the deal combines 61 of Kindred’s long-term acute care hospitals and 18 of LifePoint’s community hospitals into a 79-hospital healthcare system that is expected to rake in $3.5 billion in revenue annually.
ScionHealth is independently operated by former LifePoint and Kindred executives, as well as a new board of directors. It does not anticipate any layoffs nor service line consolidation. It will be headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky and provide high-quality, patient-centered acute and post-acute hospital solutions across 25 states.
"Breaking apart the two companies with the resources they have at their disposal makes the most sense. Launching Scion will allow both of our companies to respond more comprehensively to patient needs,” LifePoint CEO David Dill
told Modern Healthcare.
Most of the 18 hospitals from LifePoint are for-profit hospitals in smaller markets. ScionHealth will provide a greater focus on developing the service lines and recruiting more physicians for these hospitals. As ScionHealth’s long-term care and community hospitals are not close together, patients will not be directly referred, according to Rob Jay, CEO of ScionHealth and former executive vice president of integrated operations at LifePoint. The deal will not affect LifePoint’s longstanding partnerships.
Kindred’s rehabilitation and behavioral health businesses, meanwhile, will be taken over by LifePoint, along with its acute rehabilitation units, outpatient centers and post-acute facilities. This will give LifePoint around 65 community hospitals, 30 behavioral health and rehab hospitals and an additional 15 under construction, 170 outpatient and post-acute facilities and a total of 50,000 employees. Benjamin Breier, CEO of Kindred Healthcare, has left the company following the completion of the transaction.
LifePoint and ScionHealth will be well capitalized businesses and will focus on care at the bedside. They will invest in innovative service and technology to advance clinical efficiencies and compliance, to make healthcare more accessible and enhance community-based care. Each ScionHealth hospital will operate under the same name as it currently does, with communities still able to obtain care from their same providers.
