Northwest Montana’s two primary health-care providers have agreed to move forward with an affiliation agreement that would share services and employees across all facilities.

The Kalispell Regional Healthcare and North Valley Hospital boards voted last month in favor of a joint task force’s plan that ultimately will bring the Whitefish hospital under the umbrella of Kalispell Regional Healthcare.

“We move from being independent to being in more of an interdependent relationship, where we can, we think, do lots more for our communities together than we can do separately,” North Valley Chief Executive Officer Jason Spring said during a press conference Monday at Kalispell Regional.

The changes would include formatting medical records to be shared between the two hospitals. Spring said the request has been made by clinical providers, physicians and patients to have the same records in place at all North Valley and Kalispell Regional locations.

Kalispell Regional currently employs about 2,700 people while North Valley Hospital has just over 400 employees, Spring said.

North Valley will maintain its name, employees and services in all current locations. Both hospitals already have clinics in Eureka and Columbia Falls, each of which will remain under the same name and structure.

Spring said patients of the two hospital organizations won’t see any difference except for a few additional services.

“It’s the ability to share staff and grow services together,” Spring said. “We’ll have services at the location that sometimes can be more convenient to the patient, but they’ll still have a choice on if they come to Kalispell or Whitefish.”

Kalispell Regional Healthcare Chief Executive Officer Velinda Stevens said the two hospitals already share about 70 percent of services and staff, such as physicians that work in both facilities.

Tagen Vine, president of the Kalispell Regional Healthcare Foundation, echoed Stevens.

“People don’t realize how much North Valley and Kalispell Regional have already done together, with hospitalists, radiologists and different services,” he said.

Stevens said the agreement allows North Valley employees the opportunity for career growth at Kalispell Regional.

“There’s a lot more room for advancement for the employees at North Valley,” Stevens said. “They would be able to advance within our system now, so there’s job growth for them.”

Stevens said while the collaboration is not a merger, consolidation does happen in the industry.

“Just like in the insurance industry, where there used to be 50 insurance companies and now, I think it’s going to be down to four main ones pretty soon. There’s massive consolidation going on after Obamacare in the provider’s side, too.”

Stevens said Kalispell Regional isn’t immune to consolidation offers but has resisted all thus far.

“People call us all the time to see if we would like to become part of their system,” Stevens said.

Spring said he also has received interest from outside organizations but decided to keep governance close to home.

“That happened to us two years ago, and we began to explore this discussion,” Spring said. “We looked at other suitors but what made sense was creating one medical community that worked well together and that’s the direction our boards took off from.”

Financially, Whitefish and Kalispell will fall under the Kalispell Regional Healthcare system while retaining their different information systems. In other words, checks for a North Valley employee will still say North Valley Hospital.

“Underneath the Kalispell Regional Healthcare is the Kalispell Regional Medical Center, a 501(c)3 charitable hospital, and North Valley Hospital, a 501(c)3 charitable hospital, as well as the Summit Medical Fitness Center, the Brendan House, the Foundation,” Vine said. “The relationship comes back to Kalispell Regional Healthcare.”

Both hospitals will retain their own boards. Vine pointed out the overall governing board of directors will contain staff from both hospitals, keeping health-care decisions local.

Quorum Health Resources, the Tennessee-based hospital company that has managed North Valley Hospital, no longer will have a management role but probably will remain as a consultant for the combined health-care system, according to Spring.

“They’ll still provide some of those consulting services to us and to other hospitals like Kalispell Regional,” he said.

North Valley’s health-care philosophies, such as the Planetree system that focuses on patient-centered care and education, will remain in place. The hospital’s critical access status would also remain.

Spring said the task force that met for 2 1/2 years spent a large amount of time discussing the culture of each hospital and what also would fit North Valley.

“Planetree was an important component of that going forward,” he said. “Critical access was also a very important driver.”

Boards from each hospital will vote to approve the final agreement before Jan. 1, 2016.

“There’s no hard and set timeline for that, but we’d like to move on with working on the projects that we’re excited to start working on together,” Spring said. “The board will vote once the final agreement comes together.”

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.