Ministry Hospitals May Merge with Major Catholic Health System

Ministry Health Care hospitals in Wisconsin may soon merge with the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system.Ministry says it will retain a large measure of local control if the deal goes through.

Ministry Health Care operates 15 hospitals and 46 clinics with 12,000 employees in Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota.The company’s parent organization has just signed a memorandum of understanding with an even larger system: Ascension Health Alliance of St. Louis.Ministry Director of Public Relations Geoffrey Huys says there’s a lot to gain if the merger goes through.

“We’d become part of the largest and strongest Catholic and not-for-profit health care system in the country,” he says.”So that provides us with things like access to capital for building projects, expansion, to keep up with technologies and the things we need to deliver the highest level of care to the people we serve.”

Ascension has 120,000 employees, with more than 70 hospitals and 1,000 ambulatory care facilities in 21 states.Despite the size of the organization, Geoffrey Huys says Ministry Hospitals should still retain a great deal of local control.

“We align with them but they don’t operate kind of on a daily basis what we do,” he says.”This isn’t like a takeover or the kind of situation where we are going to be run by somebody from another state or another region.We will be partners and work together.”

Huys says a final deal with Ascension is four to six months away.He says he does not expect the merger to affect Ministry’s longstanding relationship with the Marshfield Clinic.