S4 Ep19: Ascension Joint Venture with Henry Ford (ft. Jay Hoffman, Henry Ford Health System)

Thanks for having me.

So for those who don't know, Henry Ford Health System is a 4,600-bed health system headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, with 10,000 providers supporting 20 hospitals.

Today we're gonna be, uh, discussing mostly the Ascension joint venture that Jay sourced and ran with, uh, at Henry Ford Health System.

And, uh, in discussing that joint venture, hopefully Jay will be able to pro- provide the, uh, business development perspective to our more technical, technically inclined audience.

So Jay, the floor is yours.

Tell me about, uh, sourcing the, uh, Ascension JV and, and, and all the different, uh, elements of that deal.

So I think the evolution of that deal really came about s- from a variety of discussions we had been having in the market with, of other, uh, health systems and looking at opportunity to partner-

Mm-hmm

... and to get scale.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Ascension wa- had embarked on looking at their portfolio of, uh, markets, I'll say hospital markets across the country, and was electing to, um, get out of some markets like Illinois, um, double down in other markets like Austin and Nashville.

And in Michigan they had a long history, and they weren't so much looking at exiting as finding a relationship with an organization that could support the mission of their, uh, their facilities, uh, some of which had been in the Ascension system since the inception of Ascension, from a variety of things.

So, uh, it was really a, uh, I will say less a sourcing effort than an ongoing conversations-

Mm-hmm

... uh, with their leadership, uh, particularly at the CEO level, Joe Impicice and, and Bob Riney, our CEOs, having conversations at a very high level to start, to start the process of putting together a partnership that is, uh, very unique in the industry.

So, um, I'd like to consider this deal.