Saltzer Health’s Boise-area clinics may close soon. 100,000 patients would be affected

Saltzer Health, one of the state’s oldest and largest primary care groups, plans to close its doors by the end of March, laying off over 450 employees and leaving the roughly 100,000 patients it sees each year without health care, unless a last-minute buyer saves it.

The medical group has 11 locations in the Treasure Valley, including in Boise, Meridian, Nampa and Caldwell.

It was purchased by Intermountain Health Care, a big, nonprofit Salt Lake City-based health system, in 2020, the Idaho Statesman reported. Saltzer Health was previously owned by Ball Ventures Ahlquist.

Since then, the medical group has discontinued walk-in urgent care at most of its clinics in Ada and Canyon counties. But it still operates the Valley’s only 24-hour, seven-day-a-week urgent-care clinic in the Ten Mile Crossing business development north of Interstate 84 in southwest Meridian.

Dr. Erik Richardson, associate medical director of family medicine at Saltzer Health, told the Idaho Statesman that he was informed Thursday morning of the decision in a meeting with company executives, who cited financial woes and said the clinics would shutter by March 29, absent a sale.

He said local leaders and administrators at Saltzer Health were not involved in the decision-making, and were themselves first informed of the decision Thursday morning.

“It is devastating,” Richardson said Thursday by phone. “For physicians and other staff, it takes us five to six months to get hired on with a new company. So if we close at the end of March, I can’t get hired until June or July, at the earliest. More importantly, our patients have nowhere to go. Our obstetrics group — they have pregnant patients who have due dates beyond March.”

He said the company said it’s in talks with a few potential out-of-state buyers, but so far nothing has manifested. But Saltzer said later that it “is optimistic that a sale can be achieved.”

Saltzer negotiating with potential buyers

Saltzer Health put out a news release saying it is “in active negotiations” with other health care companies that “may be interested in purchasing some operations.” If those discussions are successful, it said, employees may have the opportunity to continue working at the new organization.

“Like many health systems across the country, Saltzer has faced significant financial pressures as the rising cost of providing care, driven by inflation, has increased since the pandemic,” the release said. “Saltzer will work closely with caregivers and their patients who receive care at Saltzer during this transition to help with continuity of care.”

The release said “vital contracts and other market relationships did not progress as had been hoped for.”

Intermountain Health Care sent a notice Thursday afternoon to patients notifying Saltzer patients of its plans.

Intermountain scrubs itself from Saltzer website

Since the news was made public, Intermountain Health Care has tried to distance itself from the Boise-area clinics, removing its logos and any mention of itself from Saltzer Health’s website, including a section atop its about page that reflected Intermountain Health Care’s prior acquisition of Saltzer Health. The parent company’s name and insignia was previously displayed in several locations on Saltzer Health’s homepage, according to a screen capture logged Wednesday in the Internet Archive, but by Friday, all were removed.

Asked why, Intermountain Health Care spokesperson Glen Beeby replied, “Saltzer Health is in the process of transitioning to another company or closing. Removing the Intermountain Health name is part of that process.”

Dr. Mark Rasmus, who specializes in sleep medicine and is a board member at Saltzer Health, said it appeared the closure had been in the works for months.

“It’s unbelievably distressing. We feel like the rug has just been swept out from underneath us,” Rasmus told the Statesman by phone. “I’m super worried about what’s going to happen to my patients and their care.”

Rasmus has worked at Saltzer Health for over 15 years, building up his sleep-medicine practice through the company’s numerous mergers and acquisitions. He said he takes care of a number of chronically ill patients, many of whom he’s been seeing for over a decade.

Even if he planned to retire, he said, it would take at least six months to wind down the practice and transition patients so they can continue to receive care elsewhere.

The 100,000 patients Saltzer sees yearly in the Treasure Valley include over 35,000 primary-care patients, Richardson said. Combined, they make over 180,000 patient visits a year.

Other Boise-area medical practices ‘busting at seams’

“Most medical practices throughout the Valley are busting at the seams, when you try to get an appointment either with a primary care doctor or a specialist like myself,” Rasmus said. “People wait upwards of five months to get an appointment. Where will they go to get their medications refilled, or their oxygen prescriptions refilled? There’s just not the capacity in the community to absorb that.”

When Saltzer Health was bought by Intermountain Health Care a few years ago, he expected the acquisition by a bigger company would bolster his career and enable him to provide a higher level of care.

“Instead, we’re scrambling to avoid not only being unemployed but abandoning our patients,” he said.

Moving forward, he wants to find a way to continue practicing with the same staff and patients, independently. But transitioning, getting credentialed and ironing out new insurance contracts could take up to a year. Rasmus said none of the physicians at Saltzer Health have the means to keep their practices up and running without any income during that time.

Dr. Jesse Chlebeck, an orthopedic surgeon and associate medical director of orthopedics at Saltzer Health, said that he, too, is considering joining or starting a private practice.

“The uncertainty is very challenging,” Chlebeck told the Statesman by phone. “It’s challenging for our staff to know whether they want to stick it out and wait and hope that somebody purchases the group, or whether they start looking for a new job now.”

He said he has surgeries for joint replacements scheduled through May and is unsure how those might be affected. But he plans to continue providing care for his current patients.

Chlebeck said that, between himself and his physician assistant, he sees 80 to 100 patients and performs seven to 12 surgeries a week.

“I just want our patients to know that us as physicians and staff are not leaving them,” he said. “I don’t think any of us see ourselves going anywhere. It’s just going to be a little bit of a bumpy transition until we all find a landing space to continue providing that care.”

St. Luke’s plan to buy Saltzer triggered antitrust case

Dr. Joseph Saltzer founded the health-care business in 1961 in Nampa.

His “chance encounter with a rancher whose bull had a strep infection laid the path to his success as a Treasure Valley physician,” the Statesman reported in 2015. “The Saltzer Medical Group grew from a handful of doctors to become one of the largest practices in the state.”

In 2013, Saltzer was at the center of a major antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission that challenged St. Luke’s Health System’s plan to buy Saltzer.

National experts believed the case could shape the future of a then-common practice in the health care industry: hospitals buying up doctors’ practices, the Statesman reported in a 2015 story.

“At its heart, the lawsuit also was about the future of two Idaho health care giants: St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus health systems,” the Statesman reported. “Both of the systems wanted to build new hospitals in Nampa, where Saltzer is based. There were hundreds of millions of health care dollars up for grabs in Canyon County, and many patients from there were driving to Boise or Meridian for care.”

A federal judge in Boise struck down the deal, ruling that it violated federal antitrust laws.

How much might that MRI cost in an Idaho hospital? The amount could vary by the thousands

State tells Saint Alphonsus it has 1 year to gain back full trauma-center designation