Note: this editorial was published in the June 7, 2020 edition of the Toledo Blade.
It looked like a good deal. At least it looked good on paper five years ago.
The University of Toledo College of Medicine would get money and expanded research opportunities it needed. And ProMedica would get a partner in creating an academic medical center that included its hospitals.
But the reality of the partnership didn’t live up to the terms of that deal, at least not for UTMC.
Five years later, UT officials say UTMC, the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital, lost about $14.8 million through February of the fiscal year. And now the public hospital is up for sale, its continued existence in doubt.
When the UTMC-ProMedica deal was struck in 2015, then-Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office reviewed the proposal and found no antitrust concerns.
But five years later antitrust issues are apparent to the naked eye. ProMedica has systematically removed the money-making enterprises based at UTMC, transferring them to its flagship Toledo Hospital. What remains in South Toledo is a shell of its former self, destined for the auction block.
As state Sen. Theresa Fedor said in calling on state regulators to conduct a forensic audit and put the brakes on the sale of UTMC, which is a public institution, “ProMedica got the gold mine, the public got the shaft.”
Gov. Mike DeWine must intervene in this mess. State regulators must revisit the affiliation agreement and consider not just what it aimed to do, but what it has actually done to UTMC, to the medical school, to South Toledo, and to a public hospital about to be sold to the highest bidder.
As attorney general, Mr. DeWine left open the possibility that the regulators could reconsider the agreement if the deal led to anti-competitiveness in purpose or effect. The situation has clearly reached a point where this is necessary.
It’s possible that with sharper oversight — any oversight — from University of Toledo trustees who should have been looking out for UTMC’s interests in the last five years, the affiliation agreement could have been a fair bargain for both sides.
In reality, however, it’s been the healthcare industry equivalent of a car-heist ring — scooping up a vulnerable mark and stripping it for parts before shipping the skeletal remains to a junk yard.
UTMC’s medical college — one of Toledo’s crown jewels — cannot prosper, and possibly cannot survive, without its hospital. So what has been taken must be returned, with interest. Only the governor can begin that process.
That is a rotten deal and it is anticompetitive by definition. It cannot be allowed to happen.