Calif.'s Alta Bates to lay off hundreds.(Alta Bates Summit Medical Center)(Brief Article)

Modern Healthcare, July, 2001 by Benko, Laura B.

Just 18 months after completing a controversial merger designed to bolster the finances of its two hospitals, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Northern California is laying off hundreds of employees in a desperate effort to stem as much as $38 million in losses this year. The situation raises the possibility that the Sutter Health-owned system may ultimately join the growing ranks of hospital system divorces.

In late December 1999, Sutter bought struggling 420-bed Summit Medical Center in Oakland and merged it with 468-bed Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, which Sutter had purchased two years before. The Sacramento-based hospital chain pumped $450 million into the operation and assumed $100 million of Summit's debt, arguing to regulators that a merger...

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