Announcement from CHRISTUS Health CEO Ernie Sadau

I’m excited to share with you that today we’ll be announcing that we have signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Trinity Mother Frances to become a part of CHRISTUS Health.

Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals and Clinics (TMFHC) is a Catholic health system headquartered in Tyler, Texas, and is composed of Mother Frances Hospital Tyler, as well as The Louis and Peaches Owen Heart Hospital, Mother Frances Hospital Jacksonville, Mother Frances Hospital Winnsboro, Trinity Mother Frances Rehabilitation Hospital (affiliated with HealthSouth), Tyler ContinueCARE Hospital (a long-term acute care facility) and Trinity Clinic.  Trinity Clinic is the area’s preferred multispecialty medical group, with over 330 physicians and Advanced Practice Providers representing 36 specialties in 31 locations serving East Texas.

Many of you know that we have been looking for ways to strengthen our health care presence in East Texas to create a truly regional system in addition to our current locations stretching from Beaumont to Texarkana and East to Louisiana.  TMFHC has much to offer as a strong, integrated system, and will serve as a key piece in that puzzle.  We are especially impressed with the way they coordinate care with their employed physicians at the Trinity Clinic, and are excited about adding this model to the CHRISTUS family.

We believe that growing our network of facilities in East Texas will give the CHRISTUS system more opportunities to expand access to care in the region, as well as continue working to improve the quality of care we provide. It will also offer us more opportunities to pursue new models of health care delivery that depend on a strong geographic presence, ensuring that the residents of Tyler and across East Texas continue to have access to high quality health care and the latest ways of accessing the care they need.

When due diligence is complete, TMFHC will become part of the CHRISTUS Health system, and TMFHC employees will become CHRISTUS Associates. We will grow and benefit based on each other’s strengths, and together, we will positively impact lives in all of the markets we serve.

When the deal is final, TMFHC will add almost 4,260 Associates and employed physicians to CHRISTUS Health, as well as 469 staffed acute care beds, 125 additional staffed beds in joint venture relationships, more than 61,000 adjusted admissions and over $750 million a year in net revenue.  Together with the recent agreement recently announced in Colombia, CHRISTUS will grow from over $5 billion in assets to pushing $6 billion under management.

We anticipate that as part of the agreement, TMFHC would have the opportunity to appoint four board members to the CHRISTUS Health Board of Directors, including one Sister from their sponsoring congregation, the Catholic order of the Sisters of The Holy Family of Nazareth. In addition, the Catholic order of the Sisters of The Holy Family of Nazareth would become a third sponsoring congregation of CHRISTUS Health, in addition to our two founding sponsoring congregations, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of Houston and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio. As such, the new sponsoring congregation would add one Member to join the four Members of CHRISTUS Health (two from each founding sponsoring congregation).  None of this would be final until these agreements are signed, but we look forward to sharing more about the Catholic order of the Sisters of The Holy Family of Nazareth over the coming months.

Over the next 3-5 months, we will be working through the details for the agreement, and once those are finalized, a definitive agreement will be signed. While no definite timeframe has been specified to accomplish this, we intend to move forward with these final negotiations as quickly and expeditiously as possible.

I hope you are excited about this announcement and about how our system is growing to serve more people. Thank you for your support of this announcement and all you do on a daily basis to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.