Mount Sinai Medical Center and Continuum Health Partners announced a tentative merger agreement in a bid to control costs and provide more extensive medical care to patients.
The proposed marriage of two Manhattan medical behemoths comes amid continuing pressure on hospitals to comply with ObamaCare and adapt to other market forces sweeping the industry.
City residents have endured several hospital closures in recent years — most notably St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.
In Brooklyn, Long Island College Hospital is on the chopping block.
Mount Sinai is a specialty/research hospital on the Upper East Side with its own medical school and is considered financially sound.
Continuum is largely a community-hospital network that includes Beth Israel, St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals and the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary. One industry insider described Continuum’s financial condition as “fragile.”
Continuum had conducted merger talks with NYU Langone Medical Center, but NYU broke off the talks last year when it got wind that Continuum was also in discussions with Mount Sinai.
In announcing a “memorandum of understanding,” hospital officials described the merger as a good fit of two entities providing a complement of services.
“The combination will create more economies of scale, increase efficiencies and expand access to advanced primary and specialty care throughout this citywide network,” said Sinai CEO Dr. Kenneth Davis.
Continuum CEO Stanley Brezenoff added, “This collaboration makes available an extraordinary range of resources for the provision of compassionate, state-of-the-art care for patients. In joining with Mount Sinai, we will further enhance our ability to provide the full spectrum of outstanding care to the population we serve.”
Continuum doctors would become part of Mount Sinai’s Medical School faculty, and the merger presents opportunities to bolster research, officials said. Beth Israel, for example specializes in treatment of substance abuse and psychiatric disorders.
“If you are bigger, you have more bargaining power when you negotiate rates with insurance companies and contracts with labor unions. And you can negotiate better prices for food services and laundry,” said David Sandman, senior vice president of the New York State Health Foundation.
He said the merger provides an opportunity to eliminate duplicative services and more easily route patients to proper care.
Under ObamaCare, he said, hospitals will have to do a better job of providing clinical treatment rather than more expensive, in-patient surgical care.
“The emphasis is on primary care and keeping people out of the hospital,” Sandman said.
ccampanile@nypost.com
