Barb Biehner and Spence Broadhurst, chairs of the Partnership Advisory Group, which is reviewing proposals from health systems interested in partnering with or buying the county-owned New Hanover Regional Medical Center, spoke during Wednesday’s BizTalk.
 
On Tuesday, the proposals were released from the six health systems that submitted their pitches.
 
Biehner and Broadhurst said something that stuck out to them from the proposals were that several organizations described scenarios in which NHRMC would become a hub for their systems instead of simply being absorbed as another facility.
 
“It really recognized all the work that New Hanover has done and its evolution over the last many years to really become a regional provider,” Biehner said.
 
The Partnership Advisory Group (PAG), which is made up of 21 members, now will work toward whittling the list down to two or three proposals to recommend to New Hanover County commissioners and hospital trustees for further talks. That is expected to happen in May or June.
 
In exploring the hospital’s future since it first started meeting in October, the PAG also has spent time talking about what it would take for NHRMC to remain a stand-alone health system and still address some of the limitations of its current structure, such as not being able to start bond projects outside of New Hanover County.
 
“We've evaluated the alternative of staying absolutely independent,” Broadhurst said Thursday. “I'm speaking for myself, not the group, but I'm convinced that does not appear to be a viable option to me.”
 
“As we compared the six respondents,” Biehner added, “we also compare that to New Hanover [Regional] staying as it is … as what we would typically call SystemCo, where we kind of reorganized it, and then we evaluate all of them against those 18 key proposal elements. And it still comes out very strong that we need to be affiliated or aligned with something bigger that has access to more than we can do on our own.

"We haven't totally excluded it, but it certainly is not as viable an option.”
 
Those 18 proposal elements, Biehner and Broadhurst said, are how the group is evaluating the outside proposals before taking a vote in the months ahead for its recommendation.
 
The PAG is slated to meet remotely at 5:30 p.m. May 7. Info about how the public can listen to the meeting’s open session portion is expected to be released in the coming days.
 
To read all of the proposals, go to nhrmcfuture.org/submitted-proposals.
 
To submit comments to the group, email [email protected].

See the full conversation below.
 
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