Cobb County’s WellStar Health System on Wednesday announced its purchase — for a mere $20,000 — of key assets of the bankrupt health care think tank once at the center of Newt Gingrich’s multimillion-dollar empire.
And the former U.S. House speaker and one-time Republican presidential hopeful could be a participant in the reboot of his former Center for Health Transformation.
WellStar President and CEO Reynold Jennings said the hospital group acquired the rights to the trademark and other assets of the center and will convert it from a for-profit think tank to an independent, nonprofit laboratory focused on reining in the cost of medical care.
The new center will remain a nonpartisan organization, Jennings said, with a goal of attracting 20 not-for-profit health care systems across the Southeast to develop “best practices” to lower costs while providing higher quality care and greater access to consumers.
The health care group will examine outcomes from cost-saving and quality-boosting initiatives taken by member health groups, Jennings said. Dr. Robin T. Wilson, WellStar’s chief health innovation officer, will serve as the center’s executive director.
The new center will research pressing issues, including controversial provisions in the federal health care overhaul that can penalize hospitals for having too many Medicare patients discharged and readmitted within 30 days. The rule was designed to improve care and collaboration between hospitals and outpatient practitioners to prevent avoidable readmissions, which costs the health care system for seniors billions of dollars each year.
Jennings said more study is needed to determine whether readmissions are the results of poor follow-up or poor patient follow-through with care plans.
Gingrich said in a statement released by WellStar that “entities like the [center] will enable health care providers to redesign the delivery system more effectively and efficiently.”
What part Gingrich might play remains uncertain.
“The [center’s] members will decide what role — if any — that I will have,” he said in the statement.
The center had been part of an influential empire of for-profit and nonprofit entities that Gingrich created after stepping down as speaker.
It was founded in 2003 and The Washington Post reported the group brought in “at least $37 million” over an eight-year period from major health care interests and industry players. The think tank, of which WellStar was an early partner, touted its ability to bring together business and government, though it said it did not lobby.
But the Gingrich Group, which did business under the health policy center’s name, filed for bankruptcy in April, about a year after Gingrich divested his interests and gave up control of the organization to pursue a White House run.
The Gingrich Group reported $6.9 million in revenue in 2010. That fell to $4.1 million in 2011 and plummeted to under $300,000 this year, according to federal bankruptcy court records.
The group listed $1 million to $10 million in debt, with only up to $100,000 in assets, according to its initial Chapter 7 petition.
A recent financial report showed assets of nearly $80,000 against debts of about $900,000.
A Gingrich affiliate at one time was owed more than $6 million, a debt which it appears unlikely to collect. Gingrich listed in campaign financial disclosures last year a promissory note to Gingrich Productions from the think tank valued at $5 million to $25 million.
In the center, WellStar is getting a nationally recognized brand, said William Custer, a health care expert at Georgia State University.
“There is clearly a need in Georgia specifically for data analysis around the transformation of the health care system,” Custer said. “One issue is how independent they will seem.”
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