Boards vote in favor of to begin transition of LMH into Parkview Logansport Hospital

Yahoo

09-04-2025

The Logansport Memorial Hospital board, the Cass County Commissioners and Cass County Council voted unanimously in favor of a transfer agreement between LMH and Parkview Health System Monday night during a public hearing at the Cass County 4-H Fairgrounds.
With the acceptance of the transfer agreement, LMH now has a goal of transitioning to Parkview Logansport Hospital by June 30.
The agreement between LMH and Parkview Health System, which is headquartered in Fort Wayne, allows for all of LMH's assets and liabilities to be transferred to Parkview Logansport Hospital. After the transfer is complete, LMH would cease doing business as a county hospital and terminate and dissolve. All in accordance with Indiana Code 16-22-3-18. Parkview Logansport Hospital would take over the assets and liabilities as well as operation of the hospital.
Richard Church, chief growth and strategy officer at Parkview Health, said that Parkview would invest approximately $37 million into the Logansport hospital and the community. He said Parkview would pay back a $3 million loan the county had given LMH as well as other outstanding debt the hospital had accrued. Parkview will invest a minimum of $15 million into new equipment for the hospital and $10 million into converting to the Epic medical record system.
The public hearing consisted of two presentations, one by Tara McVay, president and CEO of Logansport Memorial Hospital, and one by Church. After the presentations, audience members had an opportunity to ask questions and express concerns—of which only a limited number of people did—and then the three boards voted to approve the transfer agreement.
'I think it's nice to have a plan,' McVay said after the hearing. 'I've been a long-term employee at the hospital. I've been here just under 28 years. I love the hospital and being a community hospital is important to me but then I had to stop and think about what is important to me. Continuing to have quality care, continuing to have multiple core service lines and continuing to take care of our employees. This is what I care about the hospital and the community.'
McVay said they will evaluate the hospital over the next two-and-half months alongside Parkview to determine how the transition will work and what it means for the community. She expected the transition to take from 12 to 24 months to be completed.
During her presentation, McVay focused on the difficulties the hospital had encountered over the past few years.
'We've had the quality care,' she said. 'We've provided the service. We continue to keep our service lines open to make sure we are providing that care but we struggled significantly with financial resources to do that.'
McVay said the hospital averaged approximately 3.5 million in available cash for operations, which equals about 12 to 16 days. She said that if money stopped coming into the hospital, then they would only be able to pay their bills for 16 days.
Throughout 2024, the hospital lost on average nine thousand dollars a day, she said, adding that the loss had improved from the prior two years but was still too much.
'We are a very important part of this community,' she said. 'We employ many people. We are an important economic fabric of this community. We need to have better financial stability.'
Because of those financial difficulties, the hospital had not been able to upgrade equipment over the past few years though it did have to make some building improvements over that time.
Another contributing factor included Medicaid reimbursements having not increased in 30 years, she said.
'We have been surviving for the last several years,' McVay said. 'Our employees, our community, our health care system in this area deserves to thrive.'
McVay ended her presentation buy showing how LMH's and Parkview's values aligned in terms of the supporting rural health care, valuing quality care and operating as nonprofit hospitals.
Following McVay's presentation, Church presented on how a partnership with Parkview would benefit the hospital.
Church said that Parkview serves a 22 county region that extends into many rural areas.
'This is kind of core to who we are,' he said. 'This is what we believe part of our system's mission is—to be one of the best systems in the country to delivering health care in rural communities.'
Church said one of the advantages of being a larger hospital system is being able to overcome disruptions such as COVID or unexpected Medicaid cuts on the state or federal level. He said such an unforeseen turn could cause a hospital like LMH to have to close its doors due to the small amount of cash it has on hand. He said the size of the Parkview Health system would help bring financial stability to the Logansport hospital and assist them in riding out any complicated periods or shake ups.
Church said the primary goals of Parkview would be strengthening the Logansport community through new market growth, ensuring continued high quality local access to care, sustaining employment, stabilizing financials and helping the Logansport hospital do more by being more efficient.
'You will still have community representatives from your local community that are on the board at the hospital,' he said. '(Parkview) will have a couple of people that will join and at the health system level we will provide some oversight but you will still have local folks that you can sit down with.'
'Logansport is a fantastic community with an incredible team of caregivers at its hospital,' said Dr. Ray Dusman, Parkview Health President of Physician and Clinical Enterprise, said in a press release Tuesday morning. 'As not-for-profits, our organizations are charged with caring for and reinvesting in our communities, and we are eager to work together to make an impact.'