Despite the recently announced merger of St. Claire HealthCare and the University of Kentucky HealthCare, officials said current UK St. Claire employees and patients will not face any major disruptions.
Officials said St. Claire initiated the search for a partner after assessing the needs of the region and discovering that millions of dollars in investment is needed over the next several years.
Don Lloyd is the UK St. Claire President and CEO. He said patients will not see any changes in access to their current providers.
“The only change that they will see in the coming months is we have 19 new doctors coming to our system this summer, and then we will be working with the University of Kentucky to provide additional specialty/subspeciality and new primary care physicians throughout the entire region,” Lloyd said.
The agreement between St. Claire and UK was signed off on late last week. There are more regulatory approvals to finalize, but the transition should be complete by July 1. However, changes will start happening in the coming days and weeks.
Lloyd said the only staff changes that will take effect is an increase in new hires.
“We anticipate that we will rapidly grow new employment opportunities within our system. We’re doing that on our own, now we’ve added almost 300 full-time equivalent employees since the end of the pandemic. And we anticipate that we will add hundreds if not a thousand more employees when our transition is fully implemented,” said Lloyd.
Officials said all currently accepted insurance will remain, and employee pay and benefits will also remain unchanged. All allied health professionals will be transferred into the new UK St. Claire system.