Despite concerns from the community, leaders of Akron-based Summa Health are standing by the plan for a venture capital company to purchase the health system.
Summa Health is financially stable, but it took a major hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Chief Operating Officer Benjamin Sutton.
The proposed purchase by Health Assurance Transformation Company, or HATCo, will allow Summa to stay open, he said.
“For us to keep up with inflation, to reinvest in raises for our employees, to build behavioral health centers our community needs, we have to make a profit. There are two ways to do that: one is to grow, the other is to cut,” Sutton said.
“If we do nothing, the cuts are inevitable,” he added.
Summa Health officials announced HATCo’s plans to acquire the hospital and turn it into a for-profit system in mid-January. The news sparked confusion and concern among residents and some Akron leaders.
Akron City Councilmember James Hardy spoke against the proposal during a recent council meeting and called for the health system to consider an alternative plan. Almost 300 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for Summa to keep operating as a nonprofit.
Sutton gave remarks alongside Summa board member Tracy Carter during council’s health and social services committee meeting Monday. Sutton gave an overview of the plan and took questions from city councilmembers.
Sutton acknowledged concerns from the community and said employees are feeling “uncertainty.” However, doing nothing, or merging with another not-for-profit hospital, would be even worse, he said.
The deal will allow the health system to expand its services and invest in new technologies, he said.
There are plans for a new community-based foundation that will focus on social determinants of health, which are factors like access to transportation and healthy food that affect people’s health, Sutton said.
“Things that we know impact our communities, but that Summa independently isn’t able to invest in,” Sutton said. “The size of our foundation, the dollars that we can potentially spend on this, is relatively small compared to what this future foundation is going to be.”
The health system would no longer be able to accept philanthropic donations and could not be in charge of that foundation under its for-profit status, if the deal goes through, but officials are already in talks with other community agencies to form that potential foundation, Sutton added.
