Health care industry analysts are skeptical of the venture capital firm that plans to acquire the Akron-based hospital system Summa Health, experts said at an Akron Press Club meeting on Thursday.
Paul Lee, a senior partner with Strategic Health Care, which advises hospital systems, said for the system to work as proposed, it would need to make a lot of money through new technology and efficiencies, something other for-profits have been trying to do for the last decade.
“There’s been some success in that," Lee said. "But will it be in the margin needed for the private equity group?”
J.B. Silvers, a health care analyst at Case Western Reserve University, said in theory, Health Assurance Transformation Corporation, or HATCo, is offering Akron a good deal with new tax revenue, forming a community foundation and making the health care system more financially sustainable.
But he said it all depends on if they find the balance between making the right changes and bringing in enough money with their separate artificial intelligence and scheduling software companies.
"The game that they're talking about is bringing in technology to make it more efficient and be able to handle larger capacity. It's your guess as well as mine as to whether that's going to produce a lot of profits for them or not," Silvers said. "My guess is probably not a lot."
Akron residents last week questioned Dr. Cliff Deveny, Summa's CEO, on the hospital system’s plans, saying they’re concerned a for-profit owner will cut services and cater to wealthy patients.
The experts at the Press Club event agreed that nationally, for-profit hospitals have proved mixed results for patient care.
Steward Healthcare, a for-profit system that operates three hospitals in the Mahoning Valley, declared bankruptcy earlier this year and is in the midst of auctioning off its hospitals.
Deveny said he expects the deal with HATCo to be finalized by the end of the year.
