“I welcome the stability agreement framework that Fairview Health Services and University of Minnesota Physicians have announced today as a strong step forward in the process of securing the future of health care across Minnesota with the University of Minnesota.

The agreement represents an important step toward a reimagined and revitalized partnership between Fairview, UMP, and the University, who continues to be essential to and a central player in this process. Fairview and the University will now embark on an agreement to address the remaining items before them, including provisions for graduate medical education and joint branding. They have important work to accomplish for the entire state of Minnesota, and I look forward to supporting this process.

When we began this strategic-facilitation process, I said, “A successful future for academic and clinical medicine and community health in Minnesota is a critically important component of Minnesota’s public and economic health and the health and prosperity of every Minnesota family and community.” Seven months later, after the federal government has willfully introduced uncertainty and chaos into the funding and provision of healthcare, and when Minnesotans are increasingly concerned about both healthcare affordability and access, charting a path to that successful future is even more urgent.

The University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Physicians, and Fairview Health Services can be proud of the many strong results their partnership has achieved over the years. More than 1.2 million patients and 36,000 employees, including more than 10,000 union members, rely on the partnerships between the University, UMP, and Fairview.

Those strong results, however, did not guarantee a successful future: with the longstanding agreements between the University, UMP, and Fairview soon to expire and the parties seemingly far apart, the possibility of an unwind of the agreements that would have been devastating for all three parties, their staff and patients, and the provision of medicine in Minnesota at large, was real and growing.

And with the waters of healthcare in America already deeply troubled, it was and remains critically important that we not sit back and allow the uncertainty of an unwind to swirl around the state that we love.

The new agreement between Fairview and UMP takes Minnesota one giant step away from a highly damaging unwind. The agreement ensures that the University of Minnesota remains a great place to practice medicine, conduct research, and train the next generation of physicians, and provides community and faculty physicians with the assurance and stability they have been asking for. It further reassures hundreds of thousands of patients across Minnesota that the clinical care and research they rely on at the state’s flagship institution are here to stay. It also ensures that Fairview will continue to be one of largest funders of the University of Minnesota Medical School, if not the largest, as the federal government reduces its support for academic health care.

Securing this successful future is not only the responsibility of these three parties: there is important work for the community at large to do as well. For example, as a state, we must work together to secure sustainable outside funding for the University of Minnesota Medical School, given the federal government’s devastating cuts to NIH research funding. I pledge to lead in this area and call on community leaders to join me. 

Other federal cuts — including those to Medicaid, Medicare, and Affordable Care Act subsidies, not to mention other ripple effects of the federal government shutdown — mean that all our health systems in Minnesota are under threat. I call on everyone in the healthcare community to come together to address these issues, and I will be happy to help convene these discussions. 

As Minnesota Attorney General, I have a variety of powers under state and federal law to review healthcare transactions. I invited the parties into this strategic-facilitation process because the risk that this partnership could unwind before a new agreement, aspects of which are subject to review, could be submitted to my Office was too great. With today’s agreement, an unwind is now a far more distant possibility than it was before.

The strategic-facilitation process has been meaningful to me because the University of Minnesota drew me here in 1988 as a first-year law student, and the state of Minnesota that all parties serve and cherish has kept me here ever since. As an alumnus of the Law School — where I’m speaking twice this week alone — a father of a recent Law School alum, a published author in the Minnesota Law Review, and an adjunct professor at Mondale Hall and the Humphrey School, I love the maroon and gold.

I wish to acknowledge those who have contributed to reaching this important point in the process. Fairview CEO and President James Hereford and Fairview Board of Directors Chair John Heinmiller, and Interim UMP CEO Dr. Greg Bielman and UMP Vice Chair Denis Clohisy, and their teams deserve our thanks for achieving this stability agreement that is a significant and necessary step toward a comprehensive agreement.

University of Minnesota President Dr. Rebecca Cunningham has demonstrated her energy and commitment to the University’s statewide healthcare mission and elevating that mission publicly; she and her staff continue to dedicate time and effort to the strategic-facilitation process. The Board of Regents, led by Chair Douglas Huebsch, Vice Chair Ruth Johnson, and Vice Chair Dr. Penny Wheeler, shepherd the institution broadly and embody the public leadership that distinguishes Minnesota. I look forward to the work we will continue to do together.

I am also grateful for the wise counsel I have received so far from many in the community who are not direct parties to this process. Thank you for your deep care for the Medical School, the University of Minnesota and for your understanding of central role that academic medicine plays in our state.

Finally, I wish to thank strategic facilitator Lois Quam and senior staff of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for their strategic thinking and unfailing dedication to this process. We’re not done yet and I look forward to what’s next.”

The Official Website of Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison

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