California Attorney General Kamala Harris has conditionally consented to Irvine-based St. Joseph Health’s proposed affiliation with Providence Health and Services.
St. Joseph will form a nonprofit corporation with Renton, Wash.-based Providence that’s referred to in filings with Harris’ office as Providence St. Joseph Health. The new entity would be based in Renton and keep a regional office in Irvine.
It would oversee a health system with 43 hospitals and 13,544 licensed beds ranging from Washington state down to southern Orange County and east into Texas. Local facilities include St. Joseph Hospital-Orange; St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton; and Mission Hospital, which has campuses in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach
Deputy Attorney General Scott Chan, who works in the office’s charitable trusts section, laid out some of the conditions in a letter to James Schwartz, a partner with the Los Angeles office of law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips who’s representing St. Joseph Health.
Most of the conditions deal with Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, a Providence-owned facility in Burbank.
Harris’ office also gave system-wide conditions, including requiring St. Joseph and Providence to file detailed compliance reports for 11 fiscal years after the transaction closes.
St. Joseph Health is “pleased that the California attorney general has given us conditional consent to move forward with combining our systems. We’ll take time to review the conditions carefully and have more information to share soon,” spokeswoman Nisha Morris said in a statement.
