Cox
DETROIT (Legal Newsline) - Outgoing Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has given the sale of the Detroit Medical Center to a for-profit Nashville, Tenn., firm a go, according to a report released Saturday.
According to the Detroit Free Press, which exclusively obtained Cox's report, the $391 million purchase price is fair and the sale will save the institution.
Also, according to the report, some $140 million in charitable contributions that have been made over the years to the medical center "will be preserved for intended charitable purposes."
Without Vanguard Health Systems' purchase -- or some other company's -- the medical center would've been forced to sell some of its major assets or stop providing a number of services, the attorney general's report found.
"While there are no guarantees that this transaction will indefinitely keep all the DMC hospitals open, the DMC board acted prudently and professionally to meet DMC's challenges and to maintain the historic mission of providing medical care to indigent, uninsured or under-insured patients for as long as possible," Cox's report said, according to the Free Press.
The attorney general's approval of the sale is mandatory.
Purchase of the medical center would make Vanguard the nation's fifth largest investor-owned hospital and health care firm, the Free Press said. It currently operates 18 hospitals and surgery centers as well as health plans in Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and California.
From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by e-mail at jessica@legalnewsline.com.