Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Baylor Scott & White Health are forming a partnership that will allow the two providers to jointly own five north Texas hospitals.
Dallas-based Baylor will be the majority owner of the hospitals, four of which are currently owned by Tenet. The facilities will operate under the Baylor Scott & White brand.
The deal is the latest in a slew of partnerships that Tenet has forged with not-for-profit health systems to jointly own and operate hospitals as it seeks to form integrated delivery networks in core markets.
It also comes on the same day that Tenet disclosed that it will assume ownership of United Surgical Partners International, an ambulatory surgery provider that runs its facilities in partnership with health systems and physician groups.
The hospitals include Tenet's Centennial Medical Center in Frisco, Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake in Dallas, Lake Pointe Medical Center in Rowlett and Texas Regional Medical Center at Sunnyvale (Texas).
Baylor will contribute Baylor Medical Center at Garland (Texas) to the Tenet partnership.
The hospitals will have a joint governing board, but each hospital's leadership team will remain in place. Tenet will continue to manage operations at its four hospitals in the partnership but will adopt Baylor's charity-care and community benefit policies.
Tenet's north Texas accountable care organization already affiliated last month with the Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance.
Publicly traded Tenet has been one of the most outspoken chains about its strategy to create healthcare delivery networks in each of its markets. It has been building up its outpatient services and is planning to exit regions where it can't follow through on that approach.
It plans to sell its hospitals in Atlanta and North Carolina, and is currently reviewing bids from a number of systems.
“Those were markets where we didn't really have a network,” CEO Trevor Fetter said in an interview. “We saw no opportunity to really expand in those markets.”
It also increasingly sees joint ventures as a way to partner with not-for-profit systems that aren't necessarily looking to sell to a larger provider but would consider alternative deal structures, executives said on last month's Tenet earnings call.
