St. Luke's officially merges with ProMedica

It's official: St. Luke's Hospital is part of ProMedica Health System.

The merger, announced in May, became effective Wednesday.

Beginning today, anyone insured by Paramount, ProMedica's medical insurer, can use St. Luke's clinical services, an option that has not been available for several years because St. Luke's was not in the Paramount network.

This is the biggest immediate change health-care consumers in the area will notice, according to Randy Oostra, president and chief executive of ProMedica, and Dan Wakeman, who has the same title at St. Luke's.

St. Luke's, in Maumee, was the Toledo area's last independent hospital and has struggled financially. It will retain its name, management, and community board.

St. Luke's last year considered affiliating with the University of Toledo Medical Center, formerly the Medical College of Ohio, but those talks came to nothing. It also spoke with Mercy, part of Catholic Healthcare Partners of Cincinnati.

No layoffs are planned as a result of the takeover, said Barbara Steele, ProMedica's president of acute care, who oversees the system's now 11 hospitals in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

Mr. Oostra said the acquisition is a good one for ProMedica.

"We're all concerned about the same thing. We're really pleased and excited that St. Luke's has joined us," he said.

Mr. Wakeman said the merger will give patients of St. Luke's broader services in such areas as diabetes education. The hospital will benefit from being part of a large organization that has programs in place to improve what he called "practice quality."

Mr. Oostra noted that ProMedica had a physician in charge of its quality department, an amenity most single hospitals could not afford.

The St. Luke's acquisition has come under the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission, which is on the lookout for

anticompetitive practices and investigating several other hospital takeovers.

ProMedica officials are aware of the probe and issued a statement: "The FTC will continue to review information about St. Luke's becoming a member of ProMedica. Ongoing reviews of transactions that are as sophisticated as this one are common, so this review was anticipated. As we have throughout our due diligence process, we will continue to work cooperatively with the FTC."