'Incredible assets': AU Health, Wellstar partner to expand health care
With a new name and a shared mission, Georgia’s only public medical school on Friday announced an agreement with an Atlanta-based health care system that its partners say will improve healthcare statewide and the number of trained physicians to help deliver it.
Augusta University Health System, which includes the 205-year-old Medical College of Georgia, and Wellstar Health System now will comprise Wellstar MCG Health, whose shared resources are expected to expand medical training, care and research throughout the state.
“As you all know, AU and MCG are incredible assets for our state, and I’m confident that the best days of our institution are ahead of us,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday during a virtual press conference, joined by AU President Dr. Brooks Keel, Wellstar President and CEO Candie Saunders and former Gov. Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
Boards representing all three bodies approved the agreement this week. Pending regulatory approvals, the partnership is expected to be finalized in late summer.
Here's the deal: Augusta University Health, Wellstar letter of intent made public
Side effects? What the AU Health - Wellstar merger means for Augusta
How they got to here
AU Health and Wellstar signed a letter of intent to pursue the agreement in December. According to the letter, the deal “would expand the clinical platform, including a state-of-the-art hospital in Columbia County, Georgia using the newest technology and equipment to prepare future health care professionals to practice in the changing health care environment … .”
AU emerged from a years-long legal tangle against rival healthcare groups to win the right to establish Columbia County’s first hospital.
Under the agreement – which Keel emphasized was “not a sale, not a takeover” – Wellstar will assume management of AU Health System.
All roads lead to expansion
The deal paves the way for MCG to establish a long-coveted clinical campus in Atlanta. For the past several years, MCG students have performed clinical rotations at Wellstar Kennestone, Wellstar’s flagship hospital in Marietta.
Increased access to all of Wellstar’s hospitals will allow MCG to rapidly increase the sizes of its medical classes, in a state that has been battling a shortage of healthcare professionals.
The deal is not without its critics. When Wellstar closed two of its Atlanta-area hospitals in 2022 that served lower-income communities, the move appeared to run counter to previously stated commitments to expand access to healthcare.
"A lot of the language around improving efficiencies, lowering cost, improving quality, sound great, but actually rarely come to fruition," Dr. Harry Heiman, professor of public health at Georgia State University, told The Augusta Chronicle in January. "It's more an issue around consolidation of services, and improving opportunities to negotiate with payers, and expand service provision to areas where healthcare still is quite profitable."
While the merger "would expand Wellstar's market share in the Atlanta area, Columbia County and other areas of the state," Dr. William Custer, director of Georgia State University's Center for Health Services Research, also told The Chronicle in January: "Concentration of (the) health system's market share ... leads to increases in prices between 7(%) and 9% with no increase in quality of care."
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: AU Health System, Wellstar partner to expand care, education statewide
