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The announcement of LifePoint Health and Kindred Healthcare’s merger in late 2021 heralded the arrival of ScionHealth, a new healthcare system that would operate independently from LifePoint and span across twenty-eight states, seventy-nine hospitals and counting, and thousands of employees.
“As we celebrate what’s next for LifePoint, we also mark the official launch of ScionHealth,” David Dill, chairman and CEO of LifePoint said in a formal announcement on LifePoint’s website. “Like LifePoint, ScionHealth is committed to collaboration, to investing in innovative services that will benefit the people it serves, to making healthcare more accessible, and to supporting healthier communities. While LifePoint and ScionHealth have a great deal in common, we will serve unique populations and communities across the nation.”
ScionHealth was first conceived when teams from both LifePoint and Kindred were working to align the merger and realized that the aligning of those two organizations would benefit from the creation of a new organization focused on community care and health delivery.
According to ScionHealth’s founding CEO, Rob Jay, the community health systems selected from both LifePoint and Kindred’s portfolio were selected because they would greatly benefit from focused attention, resources, and investment. But that doesn’t mean that ScionHealth hasn’t continued to grow at the same time.
In August 2022, OSF Healthcare Transitional Care Hospital in Peoria, Illinois, celebrated a ribbon cutting announcing the opening of a joint venture between OSF Healthcare and ScionHealth. The twenty-nine-bed acute rehabilitation unit (ARU) began accepting new patients in September 2022.
The new ARU specializes in helping adults recovering from loss of function or disability due to stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury, neurological disorders, orthopedic surgery, and other conditions.
In January 2023, that growth continued. ScionHealth completed the acquisition of Dallas, Texas-based Cornerstone Healthcare Group which included fifteen specialty hospitals, eight senior living locations, and three thousand employees.
“ScionHealth’s expansion, through the acquisition of Cornerstone, demonstrates our platform for growth and our priority in supporting exceptional patient and employee experiences in hospitals close to home,” Jay said in a prepared statement on ScionHealth’s news webpage. “We are excited to add Cornerstone and its dedicated team members to ScionHealth, and eager to leverage best practices from both organizations to continue delivering compassionate, quality-focused care to patients across the country who place their trust in us.”
Awards have followed ScionHealth’s expansive growth. The company earned a 2023 CoStar Impact Award for its new hospital and medical center in Orlando, Florida’s Winter Park neighborhood. The new sixty-four-bed, long-term acute care hospital spans eighty-five thousand square feet and, at time of press, is slated to open in early 2024.
The plan was selected as Orlando’s “Lease of the Year” due to its scope, and previous difficulty for other organizations looking to capitalize on the space.
The new hospital will lie in one of the fastest-growing markets in the US and is already home to two of the top ten largest hospitals in the country.
“We are proud to become an anchor tenant in the centrally located, accessible, state-of-the-art Upshot Medical Center at Mills Park,” Jay said in a press statement shared on Cision PR Newswire. “This de novo growth strategically expands ScionHealth’s portfolio of specialty hospitals across the country and affirms our commitment to deliver high-quality, patient-driven healthcare solutions in the communities we serve.”
ScionHealth may be young, but its expansion is anything but immature.
