Hospital agreement is ready

After nearly 10 months of planning, research and negotiations, the final details of a plan for Jay County Hospital to become part of IU Health are ready.

Jay County Hospital announced today that the “affiliation and asset transfer agreement” is complete and available for public review in the auditor’s office at Jay County Courthouse. The hospital board, commissioners and council will hold a public hearing to discuss the proposed agreement at 6 p.m. Nov. 20 in the Jay County Courthouse auditorium.

The agreement was finalized last week, Jay County Hospital CEO Dave Hyatt said this morning, and lawyers have spent the last several days formatting and tweaking language.

The agenda for the public hearing is still being finalized, but it will include a presentation from hospital board president Dave Littler about the process that led to the proposal to integrate with IU Health, a presentation from IU Health representatives about why they were interested in adding Jay County Hospital to their organization and what their vision is for the future, and a review of the legal documents from Jay County Hospital legal firm Ice Miller. Time for public comments will follow.

The hospital board, council and commissioners — all three must approve the agreement in order for it to go into effect — will then have the option to vote if they feel they have enough information to do so.

“I’m very excited to move forward,” Hyatt said this morning. “I think this is going to be a great thing for Jay County Hospital, and I hope that everyone sees that.”

If the agreement is approved, Jay County Hospital would stop doing business as a county hospital and IU Health would assume all of its assets and liabilities. The new facility, beginning March 1, would be called IU Health Jay.

After months of hefty financial losses, Jay County Hospital Board in January voted to work with Quorum Health Resources to plan for its future. That process led to the board in August signing a letter of intent to integrate with IU Health.

The letter created a framework for the agreement that is now in place. In addition to the transfer of all assets and liabilities, it also called for IU Health to invest $12 million in “integration activities and preliminary facility improvements” and for the new facility to be governed by a new 9- or 11-member board to include all current board members for its first three years.

The hospital and IU Health had originally set a goal of having the agreement complete last month and making the transition Feb. 1, but negotiations over details of the integration took a bit longer than they had hoped.

The last few weeks have involved working out details about how employee retirement plans and other transition details will be handled, Hyatt said.

He noted that IU Health has agreed to pay expenses related to the transfer of pension plans.

“The main points have been agreed upon for a couple of weeks,” said Hyatt.

The financial woes that sparked the decision to consider a new hospital structure continued throughout fiscal 2017, during which the hospital’s expenses outpaced revenue by nearly $8 million.