The Lutheran health care foundation is bowing out of the Denver-metro market, giving up its stake in Exempla Healthcare’s three area hospitals to its partner, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System.
The move will give Exempla access to the Sisters of Charity’s greater resources, allowing it to expand and build more quickly, Exempla officials said Tuesday in announcing the move.
The Catholic affiliation, however, will mean the loss of some women’s services, including tubal ligations and abortions, at Exempla Good Samaritan and Exempla Lutheran hospitals.
Exempla’s third hospital, St. Joseph, already operates under the tenants of a Catholic hospital.
At the other two, Exempla “will be working hard to find a third party to provide these services proximate to the hospitals, maybe even within the hospital,” said Jeff Selberg, Exempla’s chief executive.
The procedures would not be performed by hospital staff, but by third- party providers located on the premises, Selberg said.
“There are numerous examples nationwide of how this is worked,” he said.
Good Samaritan and Lutheran hospitals combined typically perform fewer than five abortions a year.
Still, Kate Horle of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains said the change may limit options for women.
“It’s always a concern for us when hospital systems, which accept taxpayer money, refuse to perform medical services,” she said.
Providing referrals to other hospitals can be problematic because insurance, and doctors’ affiliations, limit the number of hospitals available to women, Horle said.
The hospitals still will have Exempla in their names, and employees will remain Exempla employees, according to Kay Taylor, vice president of Communications and Marketing.
The agreement will not affect Kaiser Permanente’s arrangement to provide hospital care for its members at St. Joseph and Good Samaritan, according to Jacque Montgomery, Kaiser spokeswoman.
Exempla is a nonprofit corporation, owned and managed by the Sisters of Charity and the LMC Community Foundation, formerly known as Lutheran Medical Center Foundation.
Because Exempla is a nonprofit, the transaction is technically not a sale but a “transfer” of its stake in the partnership.
The terms of that transfer were not disclosed. But LMC Community Foundation will receive a “sizable donation” when the transaction is complete.
Palmer Pakerek said the foundation would use whatever the amount is to “continue the great work we’re already doing in the community.”
Selberg said the greater resources provided by the Sisters of Charity will allow Exempla to accelerate the renovation ongoing at Lutheran Hospital, expand a renovation at St. Joseph and provide more outpatient care.
Exempla Healthcare, which formed in 1998, posted net income of $74.4 million in 2005, according to the Colorado Managed Care Review 2006. Exempla’s three hospitals reported more than 49,000 patient admissions in 2005.
The Lutheran health care system has a history in the state, and its exit reflects a trend toward fewer hospitals that are owned and operated by small local organizations, said Jim Hertel, publisher of Colorado Managed Care newsletter.
“The departure of Lutheran from the marketplace in Colorado is a momentous transition” for the state, he said.
“Lutheran was one of those TB sanitariums that were developed by church organizations to care for people who developed TB, which was kind of the AIDS of its day,” Hertel said.
The Evangelical Lutheran Sanitarium opened in 1905 and eventually became Lutheran Medical Center.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
