Beaumont Will Buy Bon Secours: Letter of Intent Announced This Morning
By Patricia Anstett, Detroit Free Press
May 16–Beaumont Hospitals, in its first major foray into Wayne County, will buy the 289-bed Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe and the Henry Ford Health System will retain Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe Farms, in another restructuring of major significance in metro Detroit’s hospital industry.
The sale will take several months to complete, with a possible change of ownership by September, said Cande Tschetter, spokeswoman for the Bon Secours Health System of Marriottsville, MD. She said the system will not disclose the sale price of the properties.
It’s unknown whether all employees in the Bon Secours Cottage system will keep their jobs. “What happens to them has yet to be determined,” Tschetter said. “Both organizations want to keep the employees.” They were informed of the potential sale Wednesday morning in emails and at meetings, she said.
The Bon Secours system is a joint venture with Ford Health. Bon Secours Health owns 70% of the system; Ford owns the other 30%.
Bon Secours Health announced Wednesday morning that Beaumont had signed a letter of intent to buy Bon Secours, as well as a nursing home and assisted living center in St. Clair Shores, and that Ford will become sole owner of Cottage.
The pending sale leaves unanswered key questions, namely whether Beaumont will give staff privileges to the St. John and Ford doctors who work at Bon Secours, and whether patients insured by the Health Alliance Plan, a Henry Ford Health subsidiary, will be able to use that coverage at Bon Secours.
Ford, Beaumont or Bon Secours spokespersons also could not say immediately Wednesday morning what will happen to more than three dozen other properties in the Bon Secours system. They include rehabilitation, pharmacy, medical offices, diagnostic centers and senior day care programs.
The sale would bring a top competitor within miles of the St. John Health System’s flagship hospital, St. John Hospital and Medical Center, in Detroit, on the border with Grosse Pointe Woods.
With a new stake in Wayne County, Beaumont also will bring serious competition to the Detroit Medical Center, headquartered in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood.
St. John plans to close its Detroit Riverview Hospital by June 30, and that will leave Bon Secours as the only east side hospital between the DMC and St. John campuses.
The Royal Oak-based Beaumont Hospitals owns two Oakland County hospital; both are so successful that they operate at near capacity when other hospitals in the county sit more than half empty.
Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT at panstett@freepress.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Detroit Free Press
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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