Merger | BJC Healthcare and Saint Luke’s Health System

On May 31, BJC HealthCare and Saint Luke's Health System signed a letter of intent to form integrated Missouri-based health system. To assess the degree of similarity between the two health systems, we conducted an analysis of the largest hospital in each system—St. Luke’s Kansas City and Barnes-Jewish. The analysis reveals that St. Luke’s and Barnes Jewish have a SimilarityIndex™ M&A Score of 76.60, or a distance of 23.4. Said differently, using Barnes-Jewish as the index hospital, St Luke’s Kansas City
is its 44th most similar hospital out of the 2,299 hospitals in the national analysis. This suggests there are several other hospitals that are operationally, financially and competitively more similar from an evidence-based perspective. An M&A strategy driven by clinical, operational, and financial similarity would lead to different partners for each system. St Luke’s and Barnes Jewish data are sourced from FY2021 Cost Reports.