Michigan Drugs and Sparrow inked an affiliation settlement in 2019, with the Ann Arbor well being system integrating pediatric providers on the Sparrow Kids’s Middle in Lansing. A full merger was rumored throughout the negotiations for the affiliation. Michigan Drugs additionally made a minority funding in Sparrow’s well being plan, Physicians Well being, in 2019.
It is unclear what is going to occur to Sparrow’s current partnership with Michigan State College’s School of Human Drugs and School of Osteopathic Drugs.
The sale comes as Sparrow Well being System introduced plans earlier this fall to put off lots of of staff after recording a $90 million loss throughout the first six months of the yr, even because it struggles with employee shortages.
The Lansing-based hospital system mentioned in September that rising prices have left it no selection however to half with employees principally in management and non-patient care roles. Some eliminations will likely be in scientific roles the place affected person volumes have declined.
The system wouldn’t remark past its assertion and wouldn’t outline the precise variety of job losses.
“Bills have risen throughout all classes, together with provides and salaries, wages, and advantages, whereas affected person volumes have declined, and the price of contracting company labor has skyrocketed,” the system wrote within the assertion on the time. “In impact, the COVID pandemic could also be over clinically, nevertheless it has brought on a monetary pandemic for the nation’s healthcare suppliers. Consequently, we’re implementing employees reductions that affect a number of hundred roles on the well being system.”
Michigan Drugs employs about 25,000 workers. Sparrow employs greater than 7,500. Michigan Drugs operates only one hospital in Ann Arbor and 40 ambulatory amenities, whereas Sparrow operates six hospitals in Lansing, Carson, Ionia, Charlotte, St. Johns and a specialty hospital inside its essential Lansing hospital. It additionally operates 56 ambulatory amenities.
This story first appeared in Crain’s Detroit Enterprise.