Type | Nonprofit organization |
---|---|
Industry | Healthcare |
Founded | 1999 |
Headquarters | St. Louis, Missouri, |
Number of locations | 142 hospitals[1] |
Key people | Joseph R. Impicciche, CEO |
Services | Hospital management |
Number of employees | 142,000[1] (2021) |
Website | ascension |
Ascension is one of the largest private healthcare systems in the United States, ranking second in the United States by number of hospitals as of 2019.[2] It was founded as a nonprofit Catholic system.[3]
In 2018, it was the largest Catholic health system, with 165,000 employees, 151-hospitals, and $552.69 million in income from operations on revenue of $22.63 billion. Ascension's CEO in 2018 was Anthony Tersigni.[4] By the end of 2021, Ascension had 142,000 employees and 142 hospitals.[1]
Ascension has $15.5 billion in cash and operates a venture capital fund.[5]
Company overview
Ascension is one of the largest nonprofit and Catholic health systems in the United States as of 2021. It operates more than 2,600 health care sites in 19 states and Washington, D.C., including 142 hospitals and 40 senior living facilities. It employs more than 142,000 people as of 2021.[6][7] Ascension had an operating revenue of $27.2 billion at the end of fiscal year 2021.[8] The company is led by president and CEO Joseph R. Impicciche and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.[6]
In addition to health and senior care facilities, Ascension also operates a for-profit venture capital subsidiary called Ascension Ventures, which invests in medical startups.[9]
History
In 1999, the Daughters of Charity National Health System and Sisters of St. Joseph Health System merged to create Ascension Health, which was later renamed to Ascension; over the years, various other hospitals and clinics joined the system.[3]
In 2014, the company partnered in opening the $2 billion Health City Cayman Islands project,[10] and sold its stake in 2017.[11]
In April 2016, a class-action lawsuit was brought in federal court, alleging that Ascension subsidiary Wheaton Franciscan Services (in Glendale, Wisconsin), erred by treating its pension plan as though it was a "church plan," exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA"), a federal law governing employee pensions. In January, 2018, the parties announced a settlement, in which Ascension would pay $29.5 million to the plaintiffs.[12][13]
In December 2018, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia brought suit against Ascension in an attempt to prevent the closure of the Providence Health System hospital, which served a low-income population but was financially unviable.[14] Though the D.C. city council specifically passed an ordinance to give the city the power to block the closing, the suit was ultimately withdrawn by the Attorney General after reviewing plans for the hospital's closure.[15]
In February, 2020, a jury awarded obstetrician/gynecologist Rebecca Denman, MD, $4.75 million in damages by an Indiana jury, after suing Ascension's St. Vincent Carmel Hospital and its St. Vincent Medical Group for defamation and fraud. The lawsuit arose from a December 2017 incident, in which Denman was accused of smelling like alcohol while on duty. Denman contended that she had been cheated out of the due process, as provided in the company substance-abuse policy, depriving her of a chance to establish her innocence, and retain her position.[16][17]
In October 2021, Ascension and AdventHealth announced the planned dissolution of their joint venture AMITA in 2022. Each system will retain the hospitals they originally contributed to the partnership.[18]
Project Nightingale
The Wall Street Journal reported on a collaboration between Ascension and Google in 2019 to share health information about its patients with the technology company. Known as Project Nightingale, the stated purpose of the collaboration was to make it easier for physicians to access and search their patient records.[19] The partnership drew criticism over privacy concerns and the potential for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services opened an investigation into the project in 2020.[20][21] Carson Schmit, a professor of public health at Texas A&M University, noted that the Nightingale Project could improve health outcomes, especially by gathering data from minorities that are underrepresented in clinical studies, but also raised the lack of a patient opt-out and the Project's unclear transparency and accountability processes as concerns.[22]
Business model
In 2018, amid dwindling profit margins, Ascension announced plans to restructure and pursue a new strategic direction, with hints that it hoped to transition away from a hospital-oriented business, to a business prioritizing outpatient care and telemedicine—a new "advanced strategic direction" unanimously endorsed by its board of directors—a response to dwindling reimbursements from government and insurance providers; increasing regulatory hurdles; escalating pharmaceutical costs; industry shifts from inpatient to outpatient care models, and from fee-for-service models to value-based care models; and in response to increasing competition.[4]
Sites
The Ascension network, in 2018, included 151 hospitals.[4]
- Ascension Illinois, Illinois
- Ascension Calumet Medical Center, Chilton, Wisconsin
- Ascension DePaul Services, San Antonio
- Ascension Mercy Medical Center, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
- Ascension Michigan, Warren, Michigan
- Ascension Providence, Mobile, Alabama
- Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital, Appleton, Wisconsin
- Brighton Hospital, Brighton, Michigan
- Centro San Vicente, El Paso, Texas (community health center)
- Columbia St. Mary's Hospital, Milwaukee
- Lourdes Hospital, Binghamton, New York
- Providence Healthcare Network, Waco, Texas
- Sacred Heart Health System, Pensacola, Florida
- Saint Agnes Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland
- Saint Thomas Health, Nashville, Tennessee
- Seton Healthcare Family, Austin, Texas
- St. John Health System, Tulsa, Oklahoma
- St. Vincent Health, Indiana
- St. Vincent's HealthCare, Jacksonville, Florida
- St. Vincent's Health System, Birmingham (Blount, Oneonta, East, and Pell City), Alabama
- Via Christi Health, Wichita, Kansas
See also
References
- ^ a b c Muoio, Dave (22 February 2022). "Ascension ekes out 0.2% operating margin amid COVID disruption and slowing federal relief". Fierce Healthcare. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
- ^ "Largest hospitals and health systems in America | 2019". Beckers Hospital Review. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Our History". www.ascension.org. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
- ^ a b c "As Ascension restructures, it hints at smaller hospital footprint," March 22, 2018, Modern Healthcare, retrieved March 30, 2020.
- ^ Drucker, Jesse; Silver-Greenberg, Jessica; Kliff, Sarah (2020-05-25). "Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
- ^ a b Barr, Diana (July 28, 2021). "Ascension to require employees receive Covid-19 vaccine". St. Louis Business Journal. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
- ^ Muoio, Dave (February 22, 2022). "Ascension ekes out 0.2% operating margin amid COVID disruption and slowing federal relief". Fierce Healthcare. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
- ^ Muoio, Dave (September 21, 2021). "Ascension latest nonprofit to rebound with $5.7B net income for 2021". Fierce Healthcare. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
- ^ Doyle, Jim (February 23, 2014). "How a St. Louis-based health care system became one of the nation's biggest". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved October 11, 2021.
- ^ Doyle, Jim. "How a St. Louis-based health care system became one of the nation's biggest". St Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
- ^ "Ascension is unwinding its ownership role in Health City Cayman Islands". Catholic Health Association of the United States. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Federal judge approves Ascension Health's $29.5M settlement in class-action pension lawsuit," January 18th, 2018, Becker Hospital Review, retrieved March 30, 2020
- ^ Mueller, Angela (September 17, 2017). "Ascension settles lawsuit over pension plan exemption". St. Louis Business Journal. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
- ^ Rege, Alyssa (17 December 2018). "Ascension sued by city officials to keep DC health system open". Becker's Hospital Review. Retrieved 7 May 2022.
- ^ Jamison, Peter (12 March 2019). "Providence Hospital on track to close as D.C. drops lawsuit". The Washington Post. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ D'Ambrosio, Amanda, "Doc Wins $4.75M in Fraud, Defamation Case Against Hospital — Ob/gyn said she was wrongly accused of substance abuse," February 5, 2020, MedPage Today, retrieved March 30, 2020
- ^ Stafford, Dave, "Jury finds against St. Vincent’s, awards wrongly accused doctor $4_75 million," January 17, 2020, The Indiana Lawyer, retrieved March 30, 2020
- ^ "After seven years, AMITA Health partnership breaking up," October 10, 2021, The Chicago Sun-Times retrieved January 12, 2022
- ^ Singer, Natasha; Wakabayashi, Daisuke (November 12, 2019). "Google to Store and Analyze Millions of Health Records". The New York Times. Retrieved October 11, 2021.
- ^ Copeland, Rob; Dana, Mattiloli; Evans, Melanie (January 11, 2020). "Inside Google's Quest for Millions of Medical Records". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 11, 2021.
- ^ Barber, Gregory (11 November 2019). "Google Is Slurping Up Health Data—and It Looks Totally Legal". Wired. Retrieved 13 April 2022.
- ^ Schmit, Cason (3 December 2019). "The tricky ethics of Google's Project Nightingale, an effort to learn from millions of health records". The Conversation. Retrieved 13 April 2022.