South County Health’s Board of Trustees is pleased to announce that it has entered a 120-day exclusive diligence period to explore a transformational partnership. Though specific details and the names of the strategic, AI, digital, and clinical partners remain confidential at this time, the Board believes that this partnership would be revolutionary for South County Health, bringing, among other things, the following significant benefits to our organization and community:
- The opportunity to remain a non-profit and independent healthcare system in Rhode Island, while gaining access to national-scale capabilities and innovation.
- Clinical and digital relationships with a top ten national healthcare system, providing Rhode Islanders with access to world-class clinical expertise.
- Digital modernization through implementation of Epic – an electronic health record system that is compatible with other major RI and New England health care systems.
- Deployment of advanced digital and Artificial Intelligence-enabled clinical tools to accelerate quality, enhance patient experience, and personalized medicine through accessible genomics and expansive databases of best-in-class patient treatment protocols, allowing providers and nursing staff to more fully focus on the patient.
- Significant long-term capital infusion to assure modern facilities equipped with state-of-the-art technology.
- The assurances that all existing and future funds raised in South County will remain in South County permanently.
Many of these benefits are unique to this particular opportunity - a model that is focused on bringing long-term resources, digital modernization, and clinical innovation to South County Health — without changing our non-profit status or local governance. As with all of our partnership conversations, discussions are contemplated through the lens of benefit to the community, and South County Health will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of this transformational opportunity over the next 120 days to properly assess its potential impact on our patients, caregivers, and community. The parties have executed confidentiality agreements to facilitate the thorough diligence process, but are committed to providing further details as they become available.
Because we are in an active, exclusive diligence process governed by confidentiality agreements, we are not able to share additional details at this time regarding the names of the strategic, AI, digital, and clinical partners. However, additional information around the LOI is available in an FAQ document.
