Valley and Mount Sinai health systems team
up for 'academic affiliation'
By Beth Fitzgerald
December 19, 2014 at 11:02 AM
Valley Health System CEO Audrey Meyers: "We're looking at a strong academic affiliation." (VALLEY HEALTH SYSTEM)
Valley Health System in Ridgewood on Friday announced a strategic alliance with New York's
Mount Sinai Health System, a move Valley Chief Executive Audrey Meyers said does not
foreshadow an eventual merger of the two institutions.
A merger “is not the intent of this relationship,” Meyers said. “That is not at all what we are
looking at. We’re looking at a strong academic affiliation.”
Meyers said affiliating with Mount Sinai, a major teaching and research system, will make
Valley more attractive to physicians considering joining Valley’s medical staff. The relationship
“will enhance our clinical programs and services, it will help us in our research endeavors and
will provide educational opportunities for both physicians and our nursing team.”
Mount Sinai has seven hospitals and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Valley Health
System includes Valley Hospital, Valley Home Care and Valley Medical Group.
Valley is not a teaching hospital, and does not plan to move in that direction, Meyers said.
“Having a strong academic affiliation is attractive to physicians who are looking for practice
sites,” she said. When Valley is recruiting physicians, the affiliation means Valley can offer them
“opportunities to collaborate on research, and to have an academic appointment at a very wellrespected institution.”
The extensive medical research conducted by Mount Sinai will strengthen Valley’s growing
research activities, Meyers said. In early 2015, Valley will open an expanded research facility
and, “given Sinai’s reputation in research, this will certainly be a great way to enhance what we
can do.”
Valley said its current research programs are focused on cardiac and oncology.
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Meyers said it’s too early to identify specific areas of collaboration, or new initiatives that will
emerge from the affiliation. She said Valley and Mount Sinai will jointly recruit a new Mount
Sinai associate dean who will “will help us oversee the development of joint initiatives in clinical
services, research and educational programs.”
Valley has been seeking an affiliation for “quite some time,” Meyers said. “From a strategic
standpoint, Valley believes that having a strong academic affiliation is important and to our
community and our physicians, and to attract the best and the brightest to our organization.”
New Jersey hospitals for years have faced competition for patients from hospitals in New York
and Pennsylvania, but Meyers said out-migration is on the decline, and the relationship with
Mount Sinai will help Valley retain patients as it yields opportunities to enhance services for
patients. And, she said, “Health care is local — people want to have their care delivered locally.”
Meyers said Valley did not consider an academic affiliation with a New Jersey hospital system.
She said that, as a result of Valley’s location in northern New Jersey, “We have many doctors
who trained at Sinai. It was a great fit because our physician community knows the (Mount
Sinai) organization well, and our community is aware of their academic standing and the
standing of their clinical programs.”
While the Valley/Mount Sinai relationship is an affiliation, not a merger, the New Jersey hospital
landscape is being transformed as big systems acquire community hospitals — and as those big
systems join forces. The latest is Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health,
which last month announced a merger that will create the state’s largest health system with $3.44
billion in annual revenue.
Annette Catino, chief executive of health plan provider QualCare, said hospitals are combining
into larger systems to position themselves for a new era of population health management, where
health care systems are compensated and incentivized to improve the health of the patients in
their geographic territory.
Asked if Valley could remain independent, Catino said, “Valley has been a very, very successful
hospital, in a very affluent part of New Jersey, and they have very good quality scores, so they
are going to do all right. “
But she said hospital systems are coming together “because they think you need to cover a larger
geography and a larger population to be able to do all the things that they are going to need to
do” in the realm of population health management.
Mark Manigan, a health care attorney with Brach Eichler, said: “The relationship between the
northern New Jersey hospital market, particularly in Bergen County, and the New York City
hospital market, has always been an exceedingly competitive one. The proposed strategic/clinical
alignment between Valley and Mount Sinai certainly speaks to that.”
Manigan said it’s difficult to say if Valley and Mount Sinai will pursue a more robust affiliation
or something more limited, “with the intent of doing some co-branding in order to capture
business that both institutions may be losing to other New York competitors.”
Manigan said, “There has, without question, over the past couple years been an uptick in the
level of interest in the New Jersey market from New York institutions.” He cited Memorial Sloan
Kettering Cancer Center, which broke ground in September in Middletown in Monmouth County
for its second New Jersey outpatient cancer center, set to open in late 2016. Sloan Kettering
opened its first New Jersey cancer center in 2006 in Basking Ridge, Somerset County.
Manigan said, “The $64,000 question is really whether a New York Hospital system will seek to
establish a hospital presence in New Jersey.”
Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, chief executive of the Mount Sinai Health System, said in a statement,
“We recognize the high quality of health care that Valley Health System has traditionally
provided and see many opportunities as we partner in creating the foremost health care system in
the metropolitan New York region.”
“The best way to better serve our patients is to work with key strategic partners, and we are
proud to enter into this relationship with Valley Health System as our network of affiliated
medical providers continues to grow,” said Dr. Arthur Klein, president of the Mount Sinai Health
Network.