At the Becker’s ASC Conference in Chicago last month, I gave a presentation with Regent Chief Development Officer Jeffrey Simmons on Regent’s ambulatory surgery center joint venture models. After explaining to the audience the industry trends leading independent ASCs and hospitals to seek joint ventures and the success we’ve had with our ownership models, an audience member asked me, “Have you ever used this model to develop a joint venture between physicians and a not-for-profit health system?”
My answer was, “Yes,” and it’s a company achievement I’m happy to tell you about now. Regent has had great success creating joint ventures with not-for-profits. In fact, Regent has added four new not-for-profit health system partners in 2013.
New York Eye and Ear, a subsidiary of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, Providence Health in Renton, Wash., Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., and Saint Joseph Health of Sonoma County, Calif., have all partnered with our company and local physicians in the last calendar year to create or plan new surgery center joint ventures. In total, Regent plans to create nine ASC joint ventures with these new partners.
With all these new partnerships, it may make you wonder why I got that question at the conference at all. Well I understand where it comes from. There is a lot of paperwork, legal- wrangling and bureaucracy that must be sorted through and figured out to create a joint venture with a large, not-for-profit health system. It’s something that comes with doing business with most large organizations, especially in a field as complex as health care. This requires patience and flexibility from a management company. We have that at Regent.
We are patient because we are confident in our business, and we are flexible because our proprietary ownership models can be adjusted to fit the strategic plans of our health system partners. We can easily demonstrate our success, which eventually motivates all parties involved in the negotiation to come to an agreement. It may take additional time with a large, not-for-profit system, but our record of success is enough to win over the true organizational decision-makers, and create fruitful, lasting partnerships.
I look forward to what 2014 holds for our company. We continue to have conversations with leaders from not-for-profit health systems and I expect continued growth in this area of business for our company in the coming year.