How WVU Medicine plans to merge with Independence Health, invest $800 million in Western Pa.
GREENSBURG, Westmoreland County — Independence Health System announced on Wednesday morning, Nov. 19 that it will negotiate a merger with the West Virginia University Health System.
The sizable West Virginia health system will invest $800 million to modernize Independence Health System after the transition planned for fall 2026, the health systems announced jointly at a special news conference held at Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg.
“This is a transformational moment for our organization as we take this first, critical step toward building a new future with a nearby health system that shares our values and is community focused,” said Ken DeFurio, president and CEO of Independence Health System, which is comprised of five hospitals, including Butler Memorial, Clarion and Westmoreland hospitals.
WVU Health System — the largest health system and largest private employer in West Virginia with 25 hospitals — shared plans to commit $800 million over the next five years to modernize Independence Health System’s hospitals, including the Butler Memorial Hospital emergency room.
“They have a proven track record,” said Ken DeFurio, president and CEO of Independence Health System. “They really do a great job in taking care of patients, taking care of their employees, and standing strong for their communities.”
According to DeFurio, both parties hope for a final agreement to be in place by June, and for both state and federal authorities to approve the merger by October 2026. Independence Health System’s five hospitals, physician groups and other subsidiaries, would join the WVU Health System.
“To the citizens of this part of the state, know that we come at this with a sense of compassion and empathy and wanting to welcome everybody into a system that is really starting to peak,” said Michael T. Benson, president of West Virginia University and chair of the WVU Health System board of directors.
“I haven’t been this excited since I got an Atari for Christmas,” said WVU Medicine CEO Albert Wright. “And that was a long time ago.”
While all Independence Health facilities will retain their individual names, they will become a part of the WVU Medicine network, and the name Independence Health will be phased out.
“For example, it’ll be ‘WVU Medicine, Butler Memorial Hospital,’” DeFurio said.
DeFurio describes the proposed agreement as a merger, not a buyout or purchase, and that no layoffs or redundancies among Independence Health staff are expected.
“We’ll become a part of WVU Medicine and operate under their people,” DeFurio said.
The $800 million will also support modernization of the Westmoreland Hospital campus, grow clinical services, and expand access to care.
A news release indicated that by joining the WVU Health System, Independence Health System will benefit from the scale, expertise and infrastructure the regional academic health system while maintaining its strong community focus.
The integration would also strengthen financial sustainability through shared capital resourcing and efficient operations and enhance patient outcomes via coordinated population health strategies through Peak Health, the WVU Health System’s affiliated health insurance organization.
“WVU Medicine has clearly demonstrated to us that they are committed to high-quality community health, with services available and accessible locally,” said Paul Bacharach, chair of the Independence Health System board of directors. “Our vote to proceed with WVU Medicine reflects our strong belief that this affiliation honors our legacy and positions our hospitals for innovation, stability and growth.”
The transaction is planned for fall 2026 and subject to bondholder consent and state and federal regulatory reviews.
“In the meantime, we will still work to run our health systems,” DeFurio said during the news conference. “We will continue to take care of patients, we will take care of our employees, and we will run our organizations very responsibly as we look toward this goal.”
During the news conference, DeFurio told the Butler Eagle that, while he had gotten to know the leadership at WVU Medicine over the past three years, serious merger talks only began in the last few months.
“What I think is most important is that culturally they are very similar to who we are,” DeFurio said. “They care very much about medical education. They care about providing world-class care at their academic medical center and making sure that the community hospitals with whom they affiliate remain very, very strong.”
“It’s been a natural evolution,” Benson told the Butler Eagle. “We’d been meeting for a number of years, and I’d said to Ken and the team that we want to be close partners with Independence Health System. I said that could mean a number of things. That could mean some programming, some shared positions, or becoming a full part of the health care system.”
The West Virginia University Health System has 25 hospitals, including its flagship location of J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown with more than 3,400 licensed beds, 4,600 providers, 35,000 employees and $7 billion in total operating revenues. The J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital is an 880-bed academic medical center.
The system also includes the 150-bed WVU Medicine Golisano Children’s Hospital in Morgantown and five institutes — the WVU Cancer Institute, WVU Critical Care and Trauma Institute, WVU Eye Institute, WVU Heart and Vascular Institute and the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute.
According to Dr. Michael Fiorina, chief medical officer for Independence Health, most employees learned of the proposed merger on Wednesday morning, just hours before the news conference.
“We are going to hold a bunch of meetings with the employees, for them to have the opportunity to ask questions, and I’m going to be calling a bunch of people to try and make sure we can give them answers to their questions,” Fiorina said.
The Independence Health System was originally created in 2023, with the merger of the Butler Health System — which consisted of Butler Memorial Hospital and Clarion Hospital — and Excela Health, which consisted of Westmoreland, Frick, and Latrobe.
Both parts of the 2023 merger have recently started to claw back from multiple successive quarters of heavy financial losses tied to the economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We started three years ago with an operating loss of $77 million in fiscal year ‘23,” DeFurio said. “This fiscal year, we are very, very close to break-even. So we’ve come a long way from where we were to where we are today, and we are in a position of strength.
“And it’s nice to be in a position of strength when you’re making strategic decisions about the future.”
Multiple Independence Health physicians who had advance notice of the proposed merger spoke in support of it during the announcement news conference, including Dr. Fiorina.
“I believe anytime there's change, there's obviously anxiety and hesitation,” Fiorina said. “But when you sit back and look objectively, the good is outweighing anything that could be construed as negative.”
“We're hopefully going to be able to continue to get better with the addition of what WVU is going to bring to us,” said Dr. James Adisey, a cardiologist at Westmoreland Hospital. “The hope is that not only is this going to be beneficial for Westmoreland and Butler, but we're going to make WVU proud.”
