UF Health buying Leesburg Regional, The Villages hospitals
UF Health is buying Leesburg Regional Medical Center and The Villages Regional Hospital, the health system announced this week, firmly establishing its presence in The Villages area and expanding its reach into Central Florida.
The announcement comes at the heels of news last week that The Villages and UF Health have singed a letter of intent to bring a third hospital campus to The Villages community.
UF Health’s acquisition of the two hospitals, which are under the umbrella of Central Florida Health, will be effective on Jan. 1 “or as soon as all regular hurdles have cleared,” according to a Central Florida Health internal memo obtained by the
“This exciting development represents a bold new era in the delivery of worldclass health care in Lake, Sumter and Marion counties with a name well-known and established both regionally and nationally,” wrote Central Florida Health president and CEO Don Henderson in the memo, issued on Tuesday.
Once the purchase is complete, the hospitals will change their names to UF Health Leesburg Hospital and UF Health The Villages Hospitals. A new freestanding emergency room that’s slated to open in late January in Wildwood will be named UF Health The Villages Hospital Freestanding ER.
The leadership and reporting structure at the two hospitals will remain the same, and employee salary and benefits will also not change for at least a year, according to the memo.
Meanwhile, the Central Florida Health board of directors will dissolve and a local advisory board, governed by UF Health Shands board of directors, will take its place, officials wrote in the memo.
“We are looking forward to working with community physicians who practice at the hospitals and others on the health care team to serve the needs of the community and bring the latest health care advances to the region,” Dr. David Nelson, senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health, said in a news release.
The purchase of a two-hospital health system by UF Health is reflective of a national trend — there were more than 1,100 health-care mergers and acquisitions last year — driven by financial pressures from the health-care environment and the health organizations’ desire to increase market share and control costs.
UF Health has eight hospitals in North Central and Northeast Florida.
The acquisition will bring more powerful competition for AdventHealth Waterman, which is about 11 miles to the east of Leesburg Regional and Orlando Health South Lake Hospital, which is about 25 miles south in Clermont. The two hospitals have a larger market share in Lake County compared to Leesburg Regional, according to 2018 data.
UF Health has existing collaborations in Orlando. Since 2014, it has had a joint oncology program with Orlando Health. Also, the UF College of Medicine oversees the pediatric residency program at Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital. It has also been staffing and oversees the medical education and general pediatrics division of Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital for the past five years, according to officials.
A UF Health spokeswoman said that the health system is currently focused on the Central Florida Health acquisition. It is also working on a collaborative project with Halifax Health in Deltona.
Central Florida Health’s internal memo included a Frequently Asked Questions section, the first question of which was “Why is this acquisition occurring?”
The health system’s answer was in part that the process “began with a vision to serve and pursue the best interests of the community. Both organizations desire to join forces to advance health care in Lake, Sumter and Marion counties through delivering excellent health care services, executing on a shared vision of offering exceptional services that are patient-centered, innovative and high-quality.”
UF Health officials said in a news release that they’ve had a “complementary, collegial relationship” with Central Florida Health and have been working on several programs and initiatives to improve patient care, increase access to services and bolster primary care training opportunities for young doctors.
Leesburg Regional and The Villages hospital have received low safety scores from the Leapfrog Group in recent years. Most recently, they both received D’s in Leapfrog’s 2019 Hospital Safety report.
But Henderson disputed the grades and questioned Leapfrog’s methodology.
UF Health’s hospitals in Gainesville and Jacksonville received B’s and C’s.