CommonSpirit Health system's Centura Health has acquired hospitals in Colorado and Kansas and its CHI Memorial system announced plans to build a replacement hospital in northwest Georgia.
Centura Health grew its network of hospitals to 19 with the purchase of the 50-bed Colorado Plains Medical Center in Fort Morgan, Colorado, and the 99-bed Western Plains Medical Complex in Dodge City, Kansas. On May 1, Centennial, Colorado-based Centura acquired the two secular hospitals from LifePoint Health system for $135 million. LifePoint, a for-profit health care company based in Brentwood, Tennessee, is owned by Apollo Global Management.
The hospitals it sold to Centura now operate as nonprofit Catholic hospitals and adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. Centura renamed the Fort Morgan facility St. Elizabeth Hospital. Josh Neff is St. Elizabeth's chief executive. The Dodge City hospital is now St. Catherine Hospital — Dodge City. Centura is recruiting a chief executive for St. Catherine and Centura's two other Kansas hospitals.
According to a release, Centura hired all employees in good standing at the two hospitals.
Centura functions under a joint operating agreement between CommonSpirit and AdventHealth. Chicago-based CommonSpirit is a 140-hospital, nonprofit Catholic system. AdventHealth is a faith-based, nonprofit with headquarters in Altamonte Springs, Florida. It has 50 hospitals.
Replacement site
In 2017, CHI Memorial, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, acquired a license to run Hutcheson Medical Center, a hospital in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, that it renamed CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia. Hospital leadership promised at that time to build a new hospital to replace the aging facility. CHI Memorial has received a certificate of need to build that new campus in Ringgold, Georgia, which is about 5 miles from the current campus.
CHI Memorial expects to open the $110 million Ringgold campus in fall 2024. The new hospital will have 64 inpatient beds — the legacy campus is licensed for 179 beds. The new facility will have an intensive care unit, emergency department, operating rooms and imaging center. The hospital will be collocated with facilities that CHI Memorial opened since 2017 in Ringgold, including a cancer institute, imaging center, breast center and multispecialty clinic.
CHI Memorial has had a presence in northwest Georgia since 1994, when it opened a primary care clinic there, and it has grown since.