It's not MercyOne anymore: UnityPoint takes over Sioux City's other hospital

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SIOUX CITY -- The changeover began at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

By the daylight hours Tuesday, crews were all over the grounds at the former MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center, replacing its signage and removing the Catholic iconography and religious items placed there over the years by the Sisters of Mercy.

The keys had been turned over, and the storied hospital was now UnityPoint Health - St. Luke's Downtown.

"It's day one," said Jane Arnold, UnityPoint Health - St. Luke's president, in a wood-paneled office that is now hers at the MercyOne. Like others in UnityPoint - St. Luke's leadership, Arnold said she'll be jockeying between the two Sioux City hospitals for a while. "Right now, we're trying to have presence on both campuses."

UnityPoint announced its intent to acquire MercyOne on May 29; financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Of the two, MercyOne had a more troubled reputation, with the pausing of open-heart surgeries and downgrading of its trauma center, discontinuation of obstetrics services, various lawsuits, layoffs and labor strife, including a nurses' strike that was authorized in early 2020, then averted.

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Arnold said things will continue largely as they were at the former MercyOne, and it will remain open -- and, though emergency rooms are notoriously expensive to operate, UnityPoint will now have, in effect, two emergency rooms roughly two miles apart.

"The community should be able to expect the same care that they're receiving today, regardless of which campus that they go to," she said.

Arnold said UnityPoint worked with insurers to create coverage "bridges" for patients whose insurance treated MercyOne as in-network and UnityPoint as out-of-network -- thus UnityPoint is now in-network, at least for the time being, for such patients.

"The bridge initially is a temporary thing," Arnold said. "I think UnityPoint Health will continue to work with insurers so that we can continue to provide care and keep it local."

Also included in the deal were MercyOne Siouxland's network of primary care and specialty clinics, including those outside Sioux City, and its home health services, all of which are now UnityPoint facilities and services. This includes MercyOne's Dakota Dunes urgent care clinic, which opened only two years ago.

As is the case elsewhere in the country, hospitals in Iowa are heavily reliant on contract labor, like traveling nurses. Such staffers are very costly -- the Iowa Hospital Association, an industry group, estimated that from 2021 to 2024, contract labor costs borne by hospitals in the state increased by $257 million.

"We're hoping by combining resources, that we'll see a decrease in that contracted staff," Arnold said.

But, for the time being, at least, Arnold said UnityPoint medical workers will remain at whichever of the two hospitals they originally were assigned to, and will not be treated as interchangeable with staff at the other hospital.

Arnold said UnityPoint will honor the union contract covering nurses of the former MercyOne Siouxland, and they remain unionized. Nurses at the UnityPoint - St. Luke's hospital on the north side are not unionized.

Leo Kanne, president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 222IN, the union that represents the nurses, told The Journal Monday that he could not comment on the fate of the contract.

The transition means Sioux City no longer has a Catholic hospital, for the first time since 1890, when Mother Mary Agatha Murphy, a native of Ireland and part of the Sisters of Mercy, was invited by local leaders to come and establish a non-governmental hospital. Arnold said efforts are underway to move the Catholic items off the property of the no-longer-Catholic hospital.

"When UnityPoint Health acquired MercyOne Siouxland, they became a secular organization," Arnold said. "And the Catholic artifacts that are throughout the building, are owned by the Sisters of Mercy. So, the previous MercyOne Siouxland leaders have been working with Catholic partners in the community, to relocate those very important artifacts somewhere else in the community."

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