Rhode Island may soon see two-thirds of its hospitals' services under the control of a single hospital conglomerate known as Lifespan, which on July 27, announced its intention to merge the state's two largest hospital groups - Lifespan and Care New England. The planned merger must still undergo federal and state reviews before ground can be broken on an envisioned south Providence medical complex akin to Boston's Longwood Medical Area.
Lifespan and Care New England came close to a merger in 1998 but withdrew the plans 23 months later, reported the Providence Journal on July 28. The same article said this merger would create the "biggest company of any kind doing business chiefly in Rhode Island."
The organization's annual patient care revenues would near $2 billion dollars, and the new group would employ 17,600 workers, Lifespan's Senior Vice President and Chief Physician Officer Arthur Klein told The Herald.
Klein sees the merger as a long-term strategy for the hospitals to improve health care delivery in Rhode Island. The size of the conglomerate would reduce the cost of business functions, allowing for more investment in clinical programs, and in particular, for systemwide information technology upgrades, he said.
The envisioned south Providence medical center would add to the current campus of Rhode Island Hospital and the Women & Infants Hospital by relocating Butler Hospital to the site.
The hospitals' plans, as reported in Lifespan's July 27 press release, call for selling or developing the 110-acre campus of the current Butler Hospital and building a new psychiatric hospital at the site, including a new brain-science institute. Klein is careful to point out that the state must approve Lifespan's projected vision before any official planning will take place.
The new Lifespan organization would include the current Lifespan hospitals: Rhode Island Hospital - including Hasbro Children's Hospital - in south Providence, Miriam Hospital also in Providence, Bradley Hospital and Newport Hospital in Newport. The merger will also affect the current Care New England hospitals, including Kent Hospital in Warwick, Butler Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital in south Providence, which shares a campus with the Rhode Island Hospital.
While the University has no official control over the merger, Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Eli Adashi said he "sees some possibilities" as a result of the proposal. The new Lifespan would include all but two of Brown's affiliated teaching hospitals - excluding only the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the independent Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket - which would mean "less fragmentation" for the program, Adashi said.
Adashi, like Klein, foresees that the hospital consolidation is the first step toward the development of a substantial biomedical complex in south Providence in the next five to 10 years. The University is considering placing the Warren Alpert Medical School in the vicinity of this proposed complex in near future, he said, adding that the proximity of the medical school to such a consolidated hospital complex could create a medical center akin to that of the Longwood Medical Area in Boston.
Adashi also imagines the consolidation could have far-reaching implications for the Providence cityscape, suggesting that the Jewelry District would attract biotechnology and medical research firms and become "an attractive downtown area."
The merger would also have long-term benefits for the state, Klein said. Strengthening the partnership between Brown and the new conglomerate is "critical to our mutual ability to attract biomedical business to the state," which is in turn critical to its economic health, he said.
But first, regulators at the federal and state levels must sign off on Lifespan's new vision to improve the health care and economy of Rhode Island. "Once we've gotten the green light, we can start talking about planning and operation," Klein said.
