Duluth-based Essentia Health says it has an agreement to merge with Marshfield Clinic, a nonprofit hospital and clinic operator based in central Wisconsin.
The health systems announced the deal Thursday without specifying a headquarters location, although Dr. David Herman, the current chief executive at Essentia, will serve as CEO of a new parent company.
"We are both physician-led organizations with an unwavering commitment to the health of rural communities," Herman said in a statement about the Essentia-Marshfield combination.
It's the second merger announcement this summer for a medical center in Duluth. Nearby St. Luke's said this month it plans to merge with Aspirus Health, a Wisconsin-based health system that plans to maintain headquarters in Wausau.
The Essentia-Marshfield news came the same day Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services and South Dakota-based Sanford Health revealed they were withdrawing their mega-merger proposal after failing to get buy-in from key Minnesota stakeholders.
That deal was delayed many months as questions remain unresolved about how the health systems would work with the University of Minnesota, which in 1997 sold its teaching hospital to Fairview.
As with the proposed Sanford-Fairview deal, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will review the Essentia-Marshfield combination "using our existing authority under Minnesota's nonprofit and charities laws and state and federal antitrust laws," spokesman John Stiles said in an email.
Ellison's office also will use "our new authority in state law to review whether the merger is in the public interest," Stiles said.
