Angie Moreschi/Eyewitness News Investigator
Indianapolis, August 7 - St. Vincent hospital confirmed its acquisition of Women's Hospital of Indianapolis. The official announcement came Thursday from Vince Caponi, St. Vincent ’s CEO, at Thursday’s press conference.
As Eyewitness News first reported in July, St.Vincent has been in talks with the owners of Women's Hospital, HCA incorporated out of Nashville, about buying the hospital.
The papers were signed late Wednesday, transferring control of Women’s Hospital to St. Vincent's for a purchase price of $26-million.
St. Vincent also announced an additional $16-million in the deal for renovations planned for the Women’s Hospital facility.
Dr. John Payne of Women’s Health Partnership said, “We’re looking at labor and delivery rooms, a high-risk pre-natal unit, operating rooms, all-private rooms, the support structure…”
Services now housed at St. Vincent ’s Family Life Center will move to the current Women’s facility. That means births should increase at Women’s from 2000 to 6000 per year.
Gwen Sandefur, currently St. Vincent ’s Business and Planning Direct or, was appointed as the interim head of the new unit. “My role is not to come in and change everything,” she said Thursday. “It’s really to come in and absorb the culture and try to determine what makes Women’s special. And to look back at St. Vincent ’s Family Live Center and the spirit of caring that we developed there, and to try and meld the two together.”
Eyewitness News learned the CEO of Women's Hospital, Annie Holt, will be leaving the hospital.
St. Vincent officials say that the acquisition is not likely to lead to any additional job cuts. St. Vincent cut approximately 1,600 jobs earlier this year.
On September 1, when the closing is official, Women’s Hospital will change its name to St. Vincent’s Women’s Hospital.
The new facility will fall under St. Vincent ’s Catholic processes, which means tubal ligations will no longer be performed in the Women’s facility.
St. Vincent officials expect those treatments to go to outpatient facilities around the city and have little impact on the new hospital’s bottom line.
The surgery center on the Women’s campus is not included in the sale, and fertility treatments traditionally performed there are not expected to change.
Women's Hospital is one of the premiere labor and delivery hospitals in Indianapolis. It was founded 20 years ago as one of the first special hospitals in the area.
Women's serves about 6,000 people a year and approximately 280 employees are affected by a sale.
