When Mercy Health announced in 2019 that it would collaborate with Columbus-based Nationwide Children’s Hospital to bring more pediatric care options to the Toledo market, the leaders of both health care organizations were all smiles.
But five years later, Nationwide Children’s-Toledo finds itself as a defendant, along with ProMedica, in a lawsuit filed last week by Mercy that seeks to block collaboration between Nationwide and ProMedica.
Mercy has declined to discuss the suit or the situation that occasioned it and has referred inquiries by The Blade to a “Letter to the Community” signed by the president of Mercy Health, Robert Baxter.
The letter, which was published as a full-page ad in Sunday’s Blade, claims that Nationwide and ProMedica have worked to exclude Mercy Health from meaningfully participating in plans for pediatric services in the Toledo area. It further accuses Nationwide of violating unspecified commitments it allegedly made to Mercy Health.
Rick Miller, the president of Nationwide Children’s Hospital-Toledo, emphatically denies allegations that it has frozen Mercy Health out of collaborative efforts to deliver children’s health care in northwest Ohio or that there is anything improper about Nationwide’s attempt to collaborate with the ProMedica Ebeid Children’s Hospital.