Harvard Pilgrim forms venture with New Hampshire systems

Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Elliot Health System and Frisbie Memorial Hospital will jointly own a new company with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care that will share clinical information and financial risk for 80,000 New Hampshire residents to support population-health efforts.

The joint venture, Benevera Health, will bring together financial and clinical data to give the partner providers access to analytics that can help them manage care for all of the New Hampshire members in Harvard Pilgrim's fully insured plans.

The organizations' executives said they would make significant investments in technology. Premiums for Harvard Pilgrim members will be 4% lower than they would have been without the venture, they said.

“Our new company is a game changer,” Harvard Pilgrim CEO Eric Schultz said in a news release. “The goal is to vastly improve patient care in New Hampshire by injecting personnel and new technology that will provide doctors and other clinicians with the information they need to help their patients make the best choices about their healthcare." —Michael Sandler

Montefiore Health System will acquire St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital, a struggling facility in New York's Hudson Valley.

The deal will add St. Luke's to Montefiore's growing health system. Montefiore, based in New York City, owns 10 hospitals, including a recently acquired hospital in Westchester, N.Y.

St. Luke's, which has campuses in Cornwall and Newburgh, N.Y., began searching for a partner last year. The hospital has reported operating losses and working capital deficiencies since 2012, and that's gotten the hospital into trouble with lenders. “These conditions raise substantial doubt about the hospital's ability to continue,” the hospital's auditors said in December and in 2013.

The hospital posted a 2014 operating loss of $7.4 million on revenue of $177.6 million. Combined with other losses, including those from investments and pensions, the system's net loss last year totaled $21.5 million. —Melanie Evans