Fighting for Health Care Share.

• Author: TAYLOR, HELEN
• Position: Poudre Valley Health System, Banner Health Colorado

TWO NORTHERN COLORADO HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS DUKE IT OUT OVER MEDICAL TERRITORY, SOMETIMES DUPLICATING SERVICES AND FACILITIES. A BOON FOR LOCAL DOCS, HOW WILL IT AFFECT AREA EMPLOYERS?

Until recently one of Northern Colorado's biggest health care concerns was that a behemoth hospital system would try to stake a local claim, threatening the livelihood of regional hospitals.

That's history

Today, the battle is over local turf: Fort Collins-based Poudre Valley Health System and Greeley's Banner Health Colorado, intent on integrating every aspect of patient care into their business strategies, have grown to where the most significant competition either faces is the other.

PVHS President and CEO Rulon Stacey, and Scott Bosch, CEO of BHC, both said competition grew hotter recently Each has claimed territory in Northern Colorado towns, building new facilities and offering new services -- often duplicating each other.

For example, in Windsor, Banner has nearly finished a primary care facility on Main Street, and PVHS has completed a similar one -- right across the street, duplicating clinics in a town with fewer than 10,000 people.

"A single collaborative effort between the two systems would have been preferable, but we couldn't make that happen," said Banner's Bosch.

Likely Banner will take patients to the east into Weld County, and PVHS will take those closer to Fort Collins.

Such competition has brought a relatively subtle rivalry into the open. Mutually respectful, both remain wary.

"I'm perplexed as to why [Banner] feels the need to duplicate these services we already offer in Larimer County" Stacey said. "We started an open MRI in Fort Collins, and now they're putting one in Loveland. It seems to me that if they really wanted to serve their market, they would have put it in Greeley"

Though vexing to Stacey aggressive growth is a nobrainer to Bosch.

"Rulon [Stacey] may feel that Loveland is PVH territory because it's in Larimer County," he said, but the company's interest in Loveland makes sense, "because Loveland is growing every bit as fast as Fort Collins."

"I think competition is always healthy," said Bob Wilson, president of Columbine Health Systems, a Fort Collins geriatric care organization. Wilson formed several partnerships with PVHS. "But I was pretty surprised that [PVHS and Banner] built right across the street from each other."

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