The University of Minnesota and Duluth-based Essentia Health announced ambitious plans and raised plenty of questions Friday by proposing to create an “all-Minnesota health system solution” that would include a $1 billion joint investment over five years.
The U and Essentia, which operates hospitals and clinics in northern Minnesota, described what they called a “proposed framework” for creating a new nonprofit entity to provide patient care while supporting the university’s academic health training programs, which produce a large share of the state’s health care workforce.
This new entity would reinvest in medical facilities on the university campus in Minneapolis, the U says, while bolstering health care in rural communities and access to specialty care.
The proposal left a number of open questions, such as exactly how patients might eventually be affected. Currently, the concept is not even grounded in a formal agreement between the U and Essentia.
In an interview Friday afternoon, University President Dr. Rebecca Cunningham said the new nonprofit would be led by Dr. David Herman, the chief executive at Essentia Health. This new nonprofit somehow would align or combine the operations of Essentia and the University of Minnesota with the hospitals and clinics at Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services, a larger system that owns University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis.
“I have begun to talk with Fairview about this proposed path forward, which would include an alignment of those resources across our systems,” Cunningham said.
For nearly a year now, the U and Fairview have been negotiating a deal for the university to acquire its teaching hospital campus, which Fairview purchased in 1997 in a financial bail out.
Cunningham stopped short of saying the acquisition idea is dead, but said she’s focused instead on the new proposal, believing it would bring structural advantages over the current U-Fairview affiliation.