Two of the area’s complementary health care organizations are planning what they term an "integration," according to officials at New Hanover Regional Medical Center.

NHRMC and South East Area Health Education Center (SEAHEC) are in the final due-diligence phase of plans to combine, Martha Harlan, the medical center’s director of marketing and public relations, said Monday. When the process is complete – which should be in October, she said – both the public and the organizations’ health care staffs will benefit.

Both the SEAHEC and the NHRMC boards have approved the proposed integration, according to Harlan. There is no purchase involved in the transaction.

SEAHEC, which oversees NHRMC’s four physician residency programs as well as doing training and professional development for health care professionals and wellness education for the region, will bring those services under the regional medical center’s umbrella.

“We are bringing resources together so we can do a lot of things better,” Harlan said. “Health care is going through so much change; this alignment will allow us to better pursue our missions, saving health care dollars.”

Harlan said cost reduction would be achieved partly through the elimination of service duplications.

“Our clinical folks do outreach and education themselves. These components [in both organizations] are coming together into a unified outreach effort,” she said.

SEAHEC also runs a clinical practice called University Physicians with medical services in several areas including internal medicine, geriatrics and surgery.

The integration will add 24 doctors to the NHRMC Physician Group, Harlan said.

“These are great physicians who have been teaching other doctors, and they will be bringing their expertise within our physician group, adding depth,” she said, adding that Joseph Pino, currently SEAHEC’s president and CEO, will continue to play “a major leadership role.”

The transaction will add 105 other employees to the NHRMC staff, Harlan said. She added that all SEAHEC employees have been offered positions with NHRMC.

“Jack [Barto, NHRMC CEO] is committed to no layoffs,” she said.

Expanded capabilities resulting from the integration will also help NHRMC better respond to the Affordable Care Act, which bases institution reimbursements on patient outcomes rather than on numbers of patients treated.

“It’s no longer about hospitals just treating patients within our walls,” Harlan said, explaining that NHRMC and SEAHEC professionals can collaborate to help people become more accountable for their own health, focusing on prevention and managing more medical problems at home, preventing crisis situations that require hospital care.

“This is really about the future of health care, working with other providers,” Harlan said.

She hopes that another benefit of the integration will be to enrich the hospital’s four residency programs – programs in family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology and surgery. With more specialists and subspecialists involved in training and mentoring the emerging physicians, the programs will offer even more depth, “which ensures we keep bringing great physicians to the area,” she said, noting that about 60 percent of physicians who complete their residencies at NHRMC continue to practice in southeastern North Carolina.

Despite the medical center’s future increased payroll, NHRMC patients should not expect to pay any more for physician services than they do now, Harlan said.