While leaders of both HCR ManorCare and its new parent company, the ProMedica healthcare system, brim with confidence over their new, joint capabilities, they realize there are whispers in the corridors and curiosity-seekers peeking around corners, not so sure that their grand new experiment is going to be a success.

Combining acute-care and long-term care organizations seems logical to some, but it’s admittedly not for everybody.

“We don’t know if everyone is going to go there,” acknowledges Randy Oostra, president and CEO of ProMedica. “You still run into some people who say, ‘You did WHAT?!'”

In simple terms, the “what” is create the 15th largest healthcare system in the US. ProMedica is the nonprofit hospital giant with an array of care options that is adding HCR ManorCare’s 450 long-term care facilities and communities to its portfolio. ProMedica’s own insurance company figures to set this Petri dish apart from other acute-LTC experiments and partnerships.

“We see it as a new way to integrate and look collectively at healthy aging and how we can use services that might exist in traditional systems a little differently,” Oostra told me during a phone call this week. 

In some ways, the merger of sorts seems natural to the participants. The two companies have been Toledo, OH neighbors for a long time, both having headquarters there. Move over Tony Packo’s. There’s a new star in town.

One thing seems to be sure. This new, bigger system will have a conscience. Besides pulling HCR over to the nonprofit world (something that will happen in stages), ProMedica is going to use it to expand its work with social determinants. Oostra delighted in talking about how interesting it is “blurring the lines between what we do clinically and socially.” 

ProMedica already has a long line of studying how hunger and food insecurity affects healthy aging, for example. With the insurance piece to the puzzle already in their hip pocket, studying how aging, diagnoses and other social effects work together could yield some powerful research.

“We’re already on a really good path to success,” Oostra said. “People need to understand that their system’s office is across the street from ours. We know a lof the same people, so I would say we’d know fairly quickly, in two to three years, if we’ll be successful in the areas we’re working on. We’ll have a really good sense and see our impact.”

That’s not as long as it might sound, given the dimensions of the companies involved. And some results should be seen even sooner, added Steve Cavanaugh, the former ManorCare CEO who now serves as the president of its division within ProMedica.

“Some of the methods can show up by the end of this year. Changing care delivery models and how technology is shared will take some time. But by year-end we ought to have a good handle on what our combined organization will look like,” he said.

“Being able to put capital back in our facilities and investing in our people, I think the benefits of those things will show up pretty quickly. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t see that in 2019.”

Cavanaugh is equally intrigued by the research prospects.

“The subtle truth is the clinical does’t aways solve problems. Other factors — social determinants — may drive solutions,” he said.

Rehospitalization rates 90 to 120 days after discharge from hospital to home can be “astronomically high” in the elderly, the healthcare execs agreed. That often is because “people don’t have proper diet, or enough food, and that leads to weakening. Or they don’t have a way to get to their primary care physician.” Promedica also looks at loneliness and depression because they’re all “contributing factors” to the clinical side of things.

Hopefully, the contributions of what this partnership bring to the caregiving table will be worth watching for many years to come.

Follow Editor James M. Berklan @JimBerklan.