Ideal Business Consultants

The parent company of Denver-based Exempla Healthcare indicated this week that it is interesting on bidding to lease Memorial Health System, bringing the number of potential bidders to seven.

Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System earlier this week signed a non-disclosure agreement with the task force overseeing the leasing process for the city-owned Memorial. The national faith-based nonprofit hospital company runs three hospitals in the Denver area under the Exempla name and also owns a hospital in Grand Junction. Signing the agreement is an indication of interest from bidders and gives them access to some proprietary information about Memorial.

Six other bidders have already expressed interest in leasing Memorial: Tennessee-based HCA-HealthOne, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, University of Colorado Hospital, Arizona-based Banner Health, Centura Health, which runs Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, and Memorial’s current board and management, who would turn Memorial into an independent nonprofit.

The bidding was limited to companies already running large acute-care hospitals in Colorado and essentially every independent hospital company that qualified has indicated their interest.

Bidders have until Nov. 14 to submit proposals to the task force, which plans to pick a winning bid by the end of the year. Voters would then approve or reject the lease sometime in 2012.

City Council President Pro Tem Jan Martin, who heads the task force, said she wants to invite bidders to answer questions from the public in early December.

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