Public can comment on proposed hospital merger May 1
That town hall event will be from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Ivy Tech Terre Haute's Oakley Auditorium, 8000 S. Education Drive. Residents of Vigo County and surrounding communities are invited.
The two hospitals have filed with the state for a Certificate of Public Advantage. That process — often called COPA — allows the merger application to go through state agencies rather than the Federal Trade Commission.
The Indiana Department of Health is to rule on the Union/Regional request by Aug. 13 of this year.
To view the Union/Regional joint application, visit bit.ly/3YX7vgv.
The state health department announced the May 1 public comment session in a flier sent Friday afternoon.
Earlier this week, a bill that would shut the door on further COPA applications in Indiana after May 3 this year cleared the Indiana Senate.
The Senate, on a 46 to 1 roll call Tuesday, accepted House amendments to SB 119. The following day, the speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate signed the bill, which sends it to the desk of Gov. Mike Braun.
SB 119 was authored by state Sen Ed Charbonneau, who also was an author of the 2021 legislation that created the COPA process in Indiana.
'I didn't think I was doing 100% the right thing last time,' the Valparaiso Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, said of the 2021 COPA law. 'I do think I am this time.'
SB 119 as originally submitted this year appeared to endanger the Union/Regional merger effort. Terre Haute area officials and organizations — including Republican state Sen. Greg Goode, Union CEO/President Steve Holman and the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce — testified against the bill in its original form. But they got behind the bill after Charbonneau added an amendment that allowed the Union/Regional effort to live on.
Indiana is one of 19 states with COPA laws, which allow hospital mergers that the Federal Trade Commission otherwise might prohibit because they could reduce competition and create monopolies.
In a COPA application, the merging hospitals typically agree to meet a number of conditions to mitigate the potential harms of a monopoly. Still, some healthcare economists and the FTC argue that state oversight cannot replace competition.
Union and Regional submitted their first application in 2024, but withdrew it November of that year, with Union saying it wanted to resubmit after further work with the Indiana Department of Health. The application was resubmitted Feb. 5.
Union has argued the merger is necessary to maintain and improve the standard of healthcare in the Wabash Valley.
Union says it was the only buyer coming forward when Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare looked to sell Terre Haute Regional.
Were this merger to fall through, Union says it's possible no one would buy Regional and its associated offices, and both the physical hospital and 500 to 600 healthcare jobs would be lost to the area.
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