St. Anthony Hospital splits from parent in bid to boost community ties

St. Anthony Hospital, on the city’s Near South Side, is splitting from Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic hospital network.

St. Anthony CEO and president Guy Medaglia, who joined the hospital two years ago, says a financial turnaround gave the hospital the positioning to set out on its own.

The hospital posted a $12 million deficit in fiscal 2007, and finished its last fiscal year in the black by $730,000, Medaglia says.

Medaglia predicts the hospital will make about $3.5 million in fiscal year 2009, which has just ended. He cites an increase in revenue due increased patient visits, surgery cases and in-patient stays for the turnaround.

“It really doesn’t make sense for us” to remain in the Ascension network, he says. “We really want to be a free-standing Catholic hospital.”

As the only Ascension hospital in the state, St. Anthony didn't feel that it had the negotiating power that comes with a network. Medaglia brokered a deal with FTI Healthcare, a Brentwood, Tenn-based consultancy of which he is also a managing partner, allowing the hospital to maintain negotiating power.

With its new independent status, Medaglia says St. Anthony is better positioned to act as a community hospital. In the past two years, it has reached out to the largely African-American and Latino community to re-establish itself as a community resource.

Read the whole story at the Chi-Town Daily News.