Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy approved a merger between Northwell Health, a large New York-based health system, and Nuvance Health, which owns Danbury, Norwalk, Sharon and New Milford hospitals in Connecticut, as well as three hospitals in New York, according to a Tuesday announcement by the agency.
The two systems now have to complete the step of formally joining the entities together under the Northwell Health banner, a spokesperson for Nuvance Health said.
Northwell isn’t directly paying to buy the Nuvance Hospitals, per se, resulting in a technical purchase price of $0. Instead, the New York-based health system has agreed to invest $1 billion in Nuvance’s Connecticut and New York hospitals over the next five years, with annual reporting on the progress of those investments.
Those investments will go toward a number of capital projects and the implementation of a new electronic medical recordkeeping system, according to Boyd Jackson, director of legislation and regulation at OHS.
“No money is being transferred directly within the affiliation deal,” Jackson wrote in an emailed statement, explaining that, instead, “Northwell has made promises of capital investment.”
Nuvance Health has been struggling financially for some time, posting a $99 million deficit in fiscal year 2024, which executives chalked up to, among other factors, increasing costs and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
John Murphy, a physician and the chief executive officer of Nuvance Health, said the merger will help improve health care for the system’s patients.
“By joining forces with Northwell Health, we can strengthen and enhance our ability to meet the needs of patients across Connecticut and the Hudson Valley for generations to come,” Murphy said.
During a public hearing on the merger in November, Murphy said Nuvance’s financial challenges had reached a point where the system could no longer survive without the support of a parent company.
“Nuvance Health today finds itself at an inflection point, where continuing its current course threatens the long-term viability of our facilities and programs and the future of health care in Western Connecticut,” stated Murphy in pre-filed testimony for the November hearing. “We firmly believe the time has come to join a larger health system.”
The combined health system will have 28 hospitals, over 1,000 care sites and a network of 14,500 providers across New York and Connecticut, according to the statement from Nuvance.
The state’s approval hinges on certain conditions, laid out in an agreed settlement. These conditions include the $1 billion investment in Nuvance hospitals. The agreement also prohibits, for five years, any real estate sale-leaseback transactions, the type of deal that many critics say drained the resources from the Prospect Medical Holdings-owned Connecticut hospitals while enriching the health system’s private equity backers.
Northwell also reached an agreement in August with Attorney General William Tong to maintain labor and delivery services at Sharon Hospital for the next five years.
Northwell Health is the largest private employer in New York state, according to the company’s website, and owns 21 hospitals and 900 ambulatory sites. The health system does not currently own any hospitals outside of New York.
Health care consolidation — the trend of big health systems buying up hospitals — has been shown to lead to cuts in critical services, as well as higher prices. But the proposed merger with Northwell received significant public support.
During a hearing in November, several people from the hospitals’ surrounding communities expressed hope that Northwell could help strengthen the Connecticut hospitals. Those testifying included many Nuvance employees, as well as members of Save Sharon Hospital, a community group that has fought against service cuts at Sharon Hospital.
During the same hearing, Mark Solazzo, the chief operating officer at Northwell Health, said that the company intends to address financial challenges at Nuvance by, among other tactics, increasing staff retention, reducing reliance on outsourced contractors and driving down costs through collective purchasing.
“We have never closed a hospital, and we don’t intend to,” Solazzo said.
Katy Golvala is CT Mirror’s health reporter. This story was originally published by the CT Mirror.
When the government lacks moral authority
James Speyer
A government that lacks moral authority breeds cynicism, disillusion and distrust. It ruptures the bonds that tie us together, and destroys any sense that government exists for the benefit of its citizens and can be counted on to act in good faith.
Donald Trump’s administration is devoid of moral authority. It engages in morally indefensible conduct on virtually a daily basis. This is not a liberal talking point; it is indisputable fact. Here are some illustrations, which barely scratch the surface of the vast trove of wretched behavior this administration has amassed since January 2025:
It is morally indefensible to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists who ransacked the Capitol and viciously beat Capitol police officers in an effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
It is morally indefensible to use taxpayer dollars to reward those treasonous criminals.
It is morally indefensible to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development and thereby consign hundreds of thousands of children around the world to their deaths (according to the respected medical journal The Lancet).
It is morally indefensible for the masked thugs of ICE to murder protesters in broad daylight and face zero accountability.
It is morally indefensible to seek to imprison an innocent man on fake charges of damaging the Reflecting Pool simply to spare Trump the embarrassment of admitting that his handpicked contractor’s incompetence caused the damage.
It is morally indefensible to kill scores of defenseless people on the high seas for alleged but unproven drug running without the slightest semblance of due process.
It is morally indefensible for Trump to flee Air Force One because the Secret Service determined that remaining on board constitutes an unacceptable risk and not inform those still on the plane of that risk.
It is morally indefensible to not only pardon convicted con men and fraudsters who have collectively fleeced the public out of billions of dollars, but allow them to keep the money they stole from their victims.
It is morally indefensible to convert the Justice Department into a tool for retribution against Trump’s enemies on the basis of bogus charges (such as the ridiculous prosecution of James Comey for posting a photo of seashells in an “8647” pattern).
It is morally indefensible to favor murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un over our freedom-loving allies Ukraine and South Korea.
Through this ceaseless barrage of vile acts, the Trump administration has not just squandered whatever moral authority it might have had, it appears to have gleefully abandoned any shred of that authority.
That abandonment has dire consequences for our society.
A government that consistently favors perpetrators over victims sends the message that might makes right and playing by the rules is for suckers.
A government that creates a two-tier system of justice (one for supporters of and financial contributors to Trump and another for everyone else) shatters the bedrock principle of equal justice for all and destabilizes our society.
Perhaps most tragically, a government that regularly engages in malicious, immoral conduct teaches our young people that it’s okay to behave that way.
The moral rot that lies at the heart of the Trump administration profoundly corrodes our democracy and the rule of law that sustains it. Recovering from it – if we do recover – will be a long and difficult project. That the party in power (and its tens of millions of supporters) is either fully on board with this volcanic flow of debased conduct, or cannot bring itself to muster any meaningful objection, will prove to be an indelible and monstrously shameful stain on our country.
James Speyer is a lawyer and a volunteer for Lawyers Defending American Democracy. He lives in Sharon.