Indiana residents and federal officials are urging state health regulators to stop two rival hospitals in Terre Haute from merging. The deal, if approved, would leave residents with a hospital monopoly. It can be Union Health, a nonprofit whose main hospital is licensed as a 341-bed facility, would buy the county’s only other acute care hospital, the 278-bed Terre Haute Regional Hospital, owned by for-profit chain HCA Healthcare and located 5 miles south across the city’s downtown area.
Union says the merger to create one larger nonprofit health system would improve the area’s poor public health rankings. The Indiana Department of Health received hundreds of comments on the , according to documents KFF Health News obtained through a state public records request. Most people expressed opposition to the deal, citing concerns about longer travel times to get emergency care, higher prices, and fewer choices for Terre Haute’s 58,000 residents and those in Vigo County’s nearby rural communities.
“Monopoly should be just a board game. Not a healthcare system,” a commenter listed as H. Osborne wrote to the state health agency.
Doctors, health economists, and the Federal Trade Commission called on the Indiana Department of Health to deny Union Hospital’s merger application. Such mergers became possible after Indiana enacted a Certificate of Public Advantage law, or COPA, in 2021, shielding the deals from federal anti-monopoly laws. Two dozen states have had COPA laws o.
