In early March, Brentwood, Tenn.-based Lifepoint Health shared plans to acquire eight acute care hospitals from Louisville, Ky.-based ScionHealth, an agreement that Lifepoint President and CFO Aaron Lewis said is consistent with the system’s overall growth plans and trajectory.
“The recent announcement is an example of the opportunity that we’ll have to continue to enter more communities and grow into the future,” Mr. Lewis said during a Becker’s “CFO + Revenue Cycle Podcast.” “We’re not specifically identifying growth in acute, rehab or behavioral. We view all of them as an opportunity for future growth.”
Lifepoint Health comprises 60 community hospital campuses, more than 70 rehabilitation and behavioral health hospitals and more than 300 care sites across 33 states. It has nearly 55,000 employees, according to its website.
The ScionHealth deal is expected to close within 60 to 90 days of the March 6 agreement, pending approvals.
Mr. Lewis said Lifepoint is well-positioned to integrate the new facilities, and recently rolled out an enterprise resource planning platform across the system in just six months, which was designed to enable this type of growth.
Central to that strategy is Lifepoint’s commitment to non-urban and rural communities, where the system often serves as the sole or primary care provider.
“The organization that we’ve built, and the transformation we’ve been through over the last 12 to 24 months, is an enabler of these types of opportunities,” he said. “We’re familiar with transactions and acquisitions … it’s work that we know how to do, and will continue to equip the organization [with] to focus on the core operations in serving our communities from a quality perspective, going forward.”
Mr. Lewis said Lifepoint’s acquisition criteria centers on whether a community fits the system’s profile as a high-acuity regional hub, specifically for services like cardiac and stroke care.
“We are a transfer hub and a transfer destination for a lot of surrounding communities,” he said. “We know that the services we have are critical. We take that seriously. Communities that fit that profile, we look at and would love the opportunity to continue to expand into those. Again, our primary focus is making sure we’re expanding services in the communities that we serve today.”
Mr. Lewis said his role as CFO is to translate the system’s changes into action.
Looking ahead, he said the lessons from Lifepoint’s 2025 transformation, specifically around making change “sticky” and ensuring leaders can adopt and sustain it, will guide how the system approaches future growth and integration.
“We have to be focused on changing the score versus just reporting the score,” Mr. Lewis said.
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