Jefferson Health, Einstein Healthcare Finalize Merger

Jefferson Health and Einstein Healthcare Network have finalized their healthcare merger, creating an 18-hospital system that will provide care to Philadelphia residents.

In addition to serving patients, the expanded academic health system will help educate future healthcare professionals by hosting the largest number of residents and fellows in Greater Philadelphia.

The new organization will include hospitals that focus on seven nationally ranked specialties including cancer, ophthalmology, pulmonology, orthopedics, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and GI, and rehabilitation.

The merger will unite Jefferson Health’s Magee Rehab Hospital and Einstein Healthcare’s Moss Rehab, creating a rehabilitation system that offers brain trauma and spinal cord injury programs.

The healthcare merger will also offer level one and level two trauma centers.

“Einstein and the new Jefferson together represent an opportunity for the Philadelphia region to creatively construct a reimagining of healthcare, education, discovery, equity, and innovation that will have national and international reverberations,” Stephen Klasko, MD, chief executive officer of Jefferson Health, stated in the press release.

The new health system will include ten hospitals that have magnet status, a recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center that signifies nursing excellence and quality patient outcomes.  

Parents and infants in Philadelphia will have improved access to midwife services following the merger, the press release noted. The health system will also provide patients with access to the largest transplant programs in the region.

Jefferson and Einstein first signed a merger agreement in 2018 and the two health systems have faced a number of barriers on their road to merging.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania challenged the healthcare merger in early 2020. The agency cited that the merger would reduce competition for inpatient general acute care hospital services and rehab services in the area, increasing prices for commercial payers and their patients.

A federal district court rejected the case in December 2020. The judge stated that there was no evidence to support the FTC’s claim that the merger would hurt competition. He ruled that the FTC must provide proof that payers would not be able to avoid a price increase following the merger, and the agency did not offer that proof.

In March 2021, a little more than a year after the initial complaint, Jefferson and Einstein announced that they planned to move forward with the healthcare merger. The FTC chose not to appeal the prior ruling.

“Finalizing this merger is an important step toward securing and enhancing the future of health care for the communities we serve,” Ken Levitan, president and chief executive officer of Einstein Healthcare, stated in the press release. “Since we originally announced our plans to merge in 2018, the ongoing crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic further underscores the need for strong, local healthcare in our region.”

As the two health systems complete their merger, patient access to care will not be interrupted, the organizations emphasized.