Einstein Healthcare Network announced this morning its intent to merge with Jefferson Health.
Officials signed a non-binding letter of intent to merge at Einstein Medical Center in Northeast Philadelphia, which included an audience of nearly 100 employees, leadership and medical professionals, some garbed in white coats with stethoscopes hanging around their necks.
The merger will blend the two historic medical organizations, making health care more accessible and affordable while also expanding students’ network of study.
The merger will also expand health care options by bringing together MossRehab and Magee Rehabilitation, two of U.S. New and World Report’s top-ranked rehab hospitals.
Barry Freedman, Einstein president and CEO, noted the two organizations are not strangers to one another.
“Both are committed to delivering high-quality health care and training health care professionals,” he said. “We know and work well with each other.”
The goal is to use their shared values to grow stronger academically, preserve and enhance teaching and research missions, and better meet the needs of patients, regardless of income.
“Together we will move toward caring for entire communities, not just individuals,” he added.
Stephen Klasko, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health president and CEO, said the institution’s mission beginning 194 years ago — to lead as the first medical school in the country intent to study the human body — does not differ from Einstein’s mission.
And neither missions have not changed since their founding — it’s in their DNA.
“We make sure the people we … serve are actually getting better care, better access, better equality, better costs,” he said.
Klasko said this merger sets a precedent for the transformation of innovative health care.
“I firmly believe that Einstein is the perfect missing piece to the puzzle that was begun four years ago in creating an academic and clinical health system,” he said. “Einstein’s history of caring for the underserved, training health professionals of the future, and embracing change and innovation frankly makes them the perfect partner for our trustees’ goal of helping create a health care innovation revolution.”
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Fewer choices and less competition are good things?