The companies on Thursday officially closed their $17 billion merger, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from Colorado, Florida, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.
- Colorado: CommonSpirit Health CEO Kevin Lofton is set to retire from the role effective June 30. Lofton, who leads CommonSpirit with CEO Lloyd Dean, previously served as the CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives before it merged with Dignity Health to form CommonSpirit. Dean will become the sole CEO of the organization on July 1 (Gooch, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/22).
- Florida/Missouri: Centene and WellCare Health Plans on Thursday closed their $17 billion merger after receiving approval from the U.S. Justice Department to move forward earlier in the week. Centene in March 2019 announced it would buy WellCare Health Plans, a move that will create one of the largest providers of government-sponsored health plans with about 22 million members (Livingston, Modern Healthcare, 1/22; Danielson, Tampa Bay Times, 1/23).
- Pennsylvania: Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia this month installed online voter registration kiosks in its ED to help register people to vote. Patients, staff, and visitors can use the kiosks to check their registration status and register to vote. The kiosks are part of the VotER initiative, which was launched last year by the Harvard Kennedy School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the nonprofit Turbovote (Bean, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/22).