BOSCOBEL - It’s official. The merger announced earlier this year between Gundersen Health Systems and Bellin Health formally commenced operations on December 1. The combined network includes more than 1,000 practitioners at 100 facilities and 11 hospitals in a territory ranging from the Upper Peninsula to northeast Iowa.
What does it mean for patients at local Gundersen clinics? The short answer—for now, not much. Patients will go to the same clinics, visit the same doctors and nurses, and pay their bills through the same departments. The combined entity has no plans to lay off employees, neither medical nor non-medical. Even the two names will remain—Gundersen facilities will still be called Gundersen.
Rather, the organizations say they plan to grow bigger and create efficiency in their operations that maintain the quality and cost of community-based care.
“We are going to grow, as two organizations, and we’ll only grow better,” said Scott Rathgaber, MD at a press conference to announce the merger finalization. Rathgaber is CEO of the new organization and previously served as CEO of Gundersen Health System. “We’re not downsizing or consolidating. It’s been our intention from the beginning to continue to provide that great care and expand the ability to do that and deliver it to more and more people, and we will continue to need the great talent that is out within our four-state area.”
Efficiency will come not through layoffs or combined departments, but through investments in technology, according to Chris Woleske, who went from CEO of Bellin Health to the System Executive Vice President and Regional President of the Bellin Region with the merger.
“One of the key principles that we have adopted as part of our merger is that we will co-invest in the right technologies to provide our patients with better access to care,” Woleske said. “Technology requires significant IT resources and talent. It will bring efficiency and it will utilize talents that we have in our organization today.”
The merger may reduce long-term staff needs, Rathgaber said. In the short term, like most businesses, the healthcare network is actively seeking employees.
Both executives stressed that, unlike many recent healthcare mergers, this one is unlikely to result in price hikes or wage reductions. The network covers a broad geography and does nothing to reduce competition within the two organization’s territory, they explained.
“We’re not monopolizing care in our communities. We still have competitors, and they keep us focused on cost,” said Rathgaber. “I can assure you that we are making sure that this does not increase the cost for the people we care for because those costs come out of the community and decreases the amount of funds there are for other things, whether it’s schools or roads.”
