(Editor’s note: Today we present some of the details of an address at the groundbreaking of a new patient tower for Northside Hospital Gwinnett, in Lawrenceville. These remarks were given by Wayne Sikes, who is chairman of the Gwinnett Hospital Authority, and past chairman of Gwinnett Medical System. He also gave these remarks at the Gwinnett Rotary Club last week.—eeb)
By Wayne Sikes
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. | Today I hope to tell you some details that you may not know about our hospital system. These may be “Ge-wiz, I didn’t know that” facts. Plus, I want to tell you why and how our beloved Gwinnett Medical Center became Northside Hospital Gwinnett.
From no hospital in Lawrenceville, to groundbreaking of an eventual 17 story tower, how did this happen? Until 1959, Lawrenceville had no hospital. At the start of 1950s, there were 27 beds at Joan Glancy Hospital in Duluth, and 17 beds at Hutchens Memorial Hospital in Buford. Then in 1959, Lawrenceville got a 35 bed federally-financed Hill-Burton hospital.
As Gwinnett’s population started to explode in the 1970s, under new federal hospital legislation, everyone was out to make money on healthcare. In 1980, a new for-profit hospital was built in Snellville, and the Lawrenceville hospital watched their paying patients leave.
To survive, Lawrenceville needed a new hospital. Its Authority issued revenue anticipation certificates to move the idea forward, bringing in a young CEO Frank Rinker to lead it. It opened in 1984 with 190 beds. Gwinnett Medical Center in 2006 built a new hospital in Duluth. It built a new tower in Lawrenceville under the direction of President Phil Wolfe, and expanded technology advances.
In the late 1990s, hospitals began to change their form of governance, since as an Authority, it could not easily contract for more than one year, and could not borrow for bond debt without voter approval.
The solution for the Hospital Authority was to lease its hospital operations to a not-for-profit corporation. In our case, Gwinnett Medical System was born, leasing the hospital for 40 years. Few people realized the difference. About 2014, many hospitals began to feel a cost squeeze, with larger insurers dictating prices, and suppliers also hiking prices, so the hospitals were in a squeeze.
Around 2016, the Medical System board, led by Chair Mike Levengood, made a bold move: they decided to act while GMC was financially strong, and seek a large partner to match the Gwinnett culture.
After an exhaustive search, they chose Northside Hospital. What followed was two years of gut-wrenching, detailed work to win approval. (Without this approval, it would have been a disaster for GMC.) Though Northside had to spend a fortune on lawyers, they did not walk away. And in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission granted approval of the merger.
So Gwinnett Medical Center transitioned to Northside Hospital, Gwinnett. This was accomplished by replacing Gwinnett Medical System with Northside Hospital on the lease. The term was 40 years, and by agreement, Gwinnett will always have six citizens on the Northside Hospital board. And note that the owner of the hospital remains the Hospital Authority of Gwinnett.
That’s it in a nutshell. The Authority looks forward to the days ahead as Northside Hospital is doing a beautiful job in providing high quality medical services to our community, and keeping up with the ever-changing medical practices.
The six persons from Gwinnett on the Northside Hospital board include Wayne Sikes, Mike Levengood, Norwood Davis, Terry Jondahl, Dr. Carlton Buchanan and Dr. Keith Carnes.
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