CEO Ken Bateman sees bright future with Mercy acquisition

SoutheastHEALTH is now officially part of the Mercy organization.

The acquisition process, which began in August, was completed Wednesday, Jan. 3, after the groups received all the necessary third-party approvals.

Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau is now Mercy Hospital Southeast; Southeast Health Center of Stoddard in Dexter is now Mercy Hospital Stoddard.

Ken Bateman, the former president and chief executive officer of SoutheastHEALTH, will remain as part of Mercy Southeast's leadership team as CEO to help with the transition.

He planned to retire at the end of 2023 after he turned 65 in October. Given the magnitude of the Mercy acquisition, he decided to stay on until late 2024 to help incoming Mercy Southeast community president Ryan Geib, formerly chief operating officer for Mercy Fort Smith in Arkansas.

Ken Bateman

"He'll run the day-to-day of the hospital, and I'll be here as part of that transition because I've got nine years of history and relationships that he can benefit from and Mercy can benefit from," Bateman said.

Bateman and Geib will work alongside Mercy regional president Eric Ammons, who will oversee the slate of Mercy hospitals in Southeast Missouri.

One of Mercy's biggest goals is to attract more nurses and care providers.

With Mercy having a large footprint in Missouri and neighboring states, the hospital system has a better chance of attracting talent to the Southeast Missouri market, Bateman said.

Mercy also has more purchasing power, so the system can purchase supplies at reduced prices, which he said should offset some cost increases.

Changes on the way

Employees' benefit plans will migrate over to Mercy's on Sunday, Feb. 4; Bateman said these are comparable to what they had in the past.

One major change that impacts patients is the conversion of all Mercy Southeast facilities to the organization's electronic health record system, Epic.

"Some of the advantages that the patients will see is it will actually give them improved access to their records because the Epic portal is pretty user-friendly in terms of ... scheduling appointments, messaging back-and-forth with their providers, paying their bills. It will just give them a much easier way to access their records and history," Bateman said.

That implementation has been in the works for months, he added, and should go live in October.

Another change that could benefit patients, Bateman said, is Mercy's partnership to share data with Mayo Clinic, in conjunction with Microsoft and Epic, using artificial intelligence.

"That's over half a billion patient encounters of patient data, and using algorithms ... we believe it will help identify patients that are potentially at high risk for diseases such as diabetes or heart disease and treat those patients in a much earlier, more proactive way," Bateman said.

Mercy's size and scale, he said, puts them at the forefront of technological advancements for when massive retail or technology companies want to partner with health organizations.

As for the procedures performed at Mercy Southeast hospitals, Bateman said he doesn't want to do anything at Mercy Southeast that they wouldn't be able to do at a high quality.

"I've always been a big believer of you want the right procedure in the right setting," he said.

Dedications planned

Public celebrations featuring Mercy's traditional blessing and a ribbon-cutting are scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 11. These will take place at 10 a.m. at 650 S. Mount Auburn Road in Cape Girardeau and 3 p.m. at Mercy Hospital Stoddard.