An $11 billion megamerger planned between South Dakota-based Sanford Health and Iowa-based UnityPoint has been called off, officials confirmed Tuesday.
In June, the two health systems announced the planned merger deal that would have created one of the 15 largest nonprofit health systems in the country. With plans to become leaders in “personalized primary care," they said they intended to complete the deal by the end of the year.
Executive management teams and physicians from both health systems worked to provide a merger recommendation to both boards over the last 18 months.
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“We were excited at the opportunity our combination would have provided to create a new health system of national prominence," said Kelby Krabbenhoft, president and CEO of Sanford Health, in a statement. "We are disappointed that the UnityPoint Health board failed to embrace the vision. Our focus now is on the patients and communities we serve and the 50,000 people working tirelessly to support them.”
Sanford Health is a system with 44 hospitals, 482 clinics and more than 200 senior care centers in nine countries and 26 states. UnityPoint is a nonprofit network of 32 hospitals as well as clinics and home care services in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. The combined organization would have employed more than 83,000 staff and 2,600 physicians with operations in 26 states and nine countries, including hospitals, clinics, health plans and networks, post-acute care, research, innovation and other lines of business.