The merger of Union Health and Terre Haute Regional Hospital is important for patient care in the Wabash Valley and the vitality of the community as a whole, medical professionals affiliated with Union Health said in an interview Monday.
While some individuals have raised concerns about possible adverse impacts of a merger, the state’s granting of a Certificate of Public Advantage (COPA) “mandates legislatively things will be watched,” said Dr. Mary Abernathy, who is with Union Medical Group and specializes in maternal fetal medicine.
COPA “allows us to be fully watched” under terms of the new application recently filed by Union and Regional, she said.
All COPA commitments made in the COPA application are for five years, except for pricing limitations, which will be for seven years, according to Union.
The application, filed Feb. 5, outlines how the merger will improve health outcomes, access to care, and quality of care, and how the benefits will exceed potential disadvantages, according to an executive summary. Union Hospital is proposing 45 commitments in the 2025 application, and those commitments include accountability mechanisms for state supervision. In Monday’s interview, which was offered by Union, three physicians and a nurse who works in Union’s neonatal intensive care unit discussed why they think the proposed merger is important.
At a recent state committee hearing, Union Health President and CEO Steve Holman and state Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, suggested that without the merger, Terre Haute Regional Hospital could close. According to Abernathy, the merger would address maintaining important services at the Regional site including an emergency room, and it would continue employment opportunities for those who work there, she said. “I want to keep those highly qualified, almost 700 people here in this community,” she said. Loss of those medical professionals would have an adverse impact on availability and quality of care, she said.
Union says it will maintain emergency rooms at both sites during the COPA term.
Union has experienced the worst flu seasons in the past 15 years, Abernathy said, prompting it to put up a tent outside to help handle the influx,. Some emergency room patients have experienced lengthy waits, she said.
With a merger, maintaining the emergency room and staffing at the Regional facility will help address that issue and provide more physical space, she said.
The merger also will allow the potential for much-needed expansion for NICU, also known as the neonatal intensive care unit, pediatrics and ob-gyn services at Union Hospital, Abernathy said. “We are in dire need of more space.”
Some of Union’s other services could be moved to the Regional site, allowing for expansion of such services at Union, she said.
“Then we can have a NICU where each parent has their own room, and that means the parents can spend all night,” Abernathy said.
Union has been seeing more higher risk patients in those units, she said, and “we need to have the ability to hospitalize or house those patients here, rather than transferring their total care to Indianapolis. Dr. Mark Schuld, a family medicine physician at Heritage Family Medicine, said the merger is important for continued access to health care and facilities and to keep medical professionals in the community.
Regional Hospital services have decreased in recent years, impacting its ability to serve patients, and the merger would help ensure the facility remains open and viable, he said.
The proposed merger “allows us to consolidate some of the operations but also allows us to make them more efficient,” he said. The community can’t afford to lose Regional and its employees, Schuld said.
Dr. George Fritch, program director with Union Hospital Family Medicine Residency, said “there is a profound need to keep these (Regional) health care professionals in our community providing services they are already doing,” he said.
If those medical professionals were to leave, they also would take family members with them — having a profound impact on the community in other ways, he said.
Fritch said that in his role as a family medicine physician and primary care doctor, he works closely with specialty physicians to help coordinate the care of patients.
Many of his patients seek specialty consultative care from both Union and Regional physicians, and he believes a merger would mean better patient outcomes.
“I have no doubt it will improve the care of my patients,” Fritch said. “It will improve communication between healthcare teams. It will allow us to take an honest assessment of what resources we have in this community and make sure we are utilizing them to their fullest.”
Jennifer Jeager, a registered nurse in Union Hospital’s NICU unit, has worked at the hospital for 30 years.
The unit now sees about 150 babies each month. Many Wabash Valley families don’t have the resources to travel to Indianapolis.
“The more we can do to keep families here and keep them together during those stressful times … I think is super important,” Jeager said.
On Monday, she said that NICU had babies on the third floor with a NICU nurse because they were out of space on the ground floor of Union West.
According to the COPA, within six months of the merger, the mother-baby/ NICU/pediatric units at Union and Regional will be consolidated at Union “so that all expectant mothers seeking care at Union Hospital will have access to Level III maternal and neonatal care.”
Schuld said Wabash Valley patients will still have choices if a merger takes place. Some may choose to go to Indianapolis or other health care providers in the area.
He suggests that Union Heath needs to “raise our game a little and do better” to provide better and complete services so that patients don’t feel they have to choose those other options.
The merger will enable Union to do that, Schuld said.
According to a COPA executive summary, Union says it will:
• Only increase prices in an amount approximately equal to the Medicare Market Basket increase. The prior application limited price increases to cost of living. It is obligated for seven years to limit price increases.
• It will expand Union’s intensive care unit to 36 beds within the first three years. Currently it is 24 beds.
• It will invest at least $75 million in the Union Hospital facility over five years.
• Union has committed investing $17.5 million in implementing a common clinical information technology platform for the merged systems within 24 months of the merger.
• Additionally, Union says it will invest at least $30 million in the Regional Hospital facilities over five years.
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