Healthy relationships: small-town hospitals gain by joining the region's two major health systems.

• Author: Frazier, Lynne McKenna
• Position: Focus

When ever northeast Indiana residents are admitted to a hospital, need emergency care or visit a hospital for outpatient care, more likely than not they're being treated by one of two health-care systems.

During the past seven years, most of the independent community hospitals throughout the region have joined either the Lutheran Health Network, part of Triad Hospital Corp., or the Parkview Health System, a non-profit regional company based in Fort Wayne.

In the wake of that ownership shift has come a burst of building, with new hospitals replacing older ones, expansions of existing facilities and three entirely new facilities built on the north side of Fort Wayne.

Money was a major driver in consolidation. Smaller hospitals found it expensive to keep up with the latest technology, let alone invest in much-needed bricks and mortar. "For smaller communities with a stand-alone facility, capital access is probably the driving reason" to join a larger hospital group, says Charles Mason, president and CEO of Parkview Health System.

Although both of the systems are based in Fort Wayne, there's still a lot of care--especially primary care--that takes place in surrounding community hospitals. And both Parkview and Lutheran are continually redefining where certain types of care are best delivered "You've got to pick and choose what services make sense for each hospital," says Thomas D. Miller, chief executive officer of the Lutheran Health Network.

Community hospitals "increase their ability to deliver a larger spectrum of care by joining a system," says Art DeTorre, executive vice president for strategic direction and business development at Parkview Health System. "It becomes a matter of matching a spectrum of needs with a spectrum of care."

The trend has touched almost every community in northeast Indiana. There are only three independent hospitals left in the region--DeKalb Memorial in Auburn, Cameron in Angola and Adams County Memorial in Decatur. The Angola Cancer Care Center was opened as a joint venture between Cameron, Parkview and a physician group. And the Decatur hospital has said it is considering joining a network, possibly Lutheran.

Months and sometimes years of discussions preceded other consolidations involving Lutheran and Parkview. In cities where non-profit hospitals became part of Lutheran, the purchase price was used to establish charitable foundations. In Bluffton for example, when publicly owned Wells County Community...