Beaumont, Botsford and Oakwood Agree To Merge Into One Health System

DETROIT (WWJ) -- The boards of Beaumont Health System, Botsford Health Care and Oakwood Healthcare have unanimously approved an agreement to combine their operations into a new $4 billion health care organization.

Under the terms of the agreement, the three systems are creating a new, non-profit system called Beaumont Health. The deal is designed to combine 8 hospitals and more than 150 outpatient sites.

Beaumont CEO Gene Michalski, who will serve as initial CEO of the new system, said that unlike the Henry Ford-Beaumont deal that fell through last year, it's a good fit geographically and ideologically.

"The cultural differences within Beaumont, Botsford and Oakwood are very, very similar culturally," Michalski. "We've done a cultural assessment preliminarily and there's a great cultural fit as well."

The Federal Trade Commission and various state agencies still have to approve the final deal, which the executive board hopes will happen by September.

"We have not focused staffing reductions at this point," Michalski said. "We're looking for synergies that exist outside of staffing reductions, so we don't have any time frame or numbers on staffing reductions."

The three organizations announced a letter of intent on March 21 to integrate their facilities into a new "comprehensive, collaborative health system focused on advancing quality and access to care throughout the region."

"Things that are all on the expense side of the ledger -- there's plenty of work and plenty of opportunity right there to streamline operations and take cost out of the system for redundancy that exists already," Michalski said.

As announced in March, the new health system will be governed by a single board and executive leadership structure with representation from the three organizations.