Loyola Medicine plans to pay about $270 million to buy west suburban MacNeal Hospital from its giant for-profit owner that's exiting the Chicago-area market.
The proposed purchase price was disclosed in a new application Loyola filed with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board, the regulator that must approve the sale. If approved, the deal is slated to close March 1.
Spokespeople for Loyola and Tenet, which owns MacNeal, declined to comment on the acquisition price.
Maywood-based Loyola, a not-for-profit two-hospital system owned by Catholic giant Trinity Health, announced in October that it planned to buy Berwyn-based MacNeal.
The deal also includes local Tenet-owned physician groups, the Chicago Health System (an independent practice of nearly 1,000 doctors), and CHS' accountable care organization. ACOs aim to lower health care costs by focusing on prevention and coordinating patients' treatment.
With more than 70 hospitals nationwide, Tenet also locally owns Weiss Memorial Hospital in the Uptown neighborhood, Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park and West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. Tenet is looking to leave the Chicago market entirely, only a few years after arriving. Nationwide, Tenet is hustling to cut costs, partly by selling hospitals.
The Loyola-MacNeal merger would be the latest in the Chicago area, where hospitals are striking deals to scale up fast. The idea is that by having more patients and doctors to treat them, hospitals can better spread the financial risk of taking on the sickest people. That's because insurers are increasingly paying hospitals for the quality they provide, rather than the amount of care. Hospitals and doctors can make money if they do well, and lose money if they don't.
With 359 beds staffed by medical providers in 2016, MacNeal is about four miles east of 557-bed Loyola. The system also includes Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, a 227-bed community hospital in Melrose Park. The regional system includes more than 1,200 doctors, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing.
In the application to state regulators, Loyola said that adding MacNeal likely would reduce costs at the hospital and surrounding communities it serves, though by how much isn't clear. Loyola noted that it will continue to invest in MacNeal and its employees, and the scope of services offered at the hospital would not change.
"Loyola to pony up $270 million for west suburban hospital" originally appeared in Crain's Chicago Business.
