Scripps Clinic, Memorial Hospitals to Merge

After a whirlwind courtship, Scripps Memorial Hospitals and Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation have agreed to unify next Jan. 1, leaving Sharp HealthCare as the jilted party in a health-care triangle.

The surprise union announced Friday would create the largest health-care concern in San Diego County, an $820-million-a-year conglomerate that would be the county’s No. 2 non-governmental employer.

It also effectively scuttles Scripps Clinic-Sharp HealthCare merger talks that had been going on for a year. There had been reports in the health-care community over the last month that those talks had broken down.

A Sharp spokeswoman tersely said Friday that Sharp was surprised by the move.

“We didn’t participate in the (Scripps-Scripps) deliberations, nor were we advised of them. We had continued our discussions with the clinic regarding development of joint clinical programs literally until today,” said Cindy Cohagen.

She said she had no comment on the future of the joint organ transplant program that Sharp and Scripps Clinic inaugurated last year.

Ironically, it was publicity in early June about the potential Scripps Clinic-Sharp merger that helped bring about the subsequent talks between the two Scripps facilities.

After reading in the newspaper about the Sharp merger talks, trustees of the two Scrippses began talking informally later in June, said Ames S. Early, president of Scripps Memorial.

The discussions quickly snowballed. Over the last two weeks, administrators entered the talks and the agreement was forged, Early said.

Discussions moved so quickly, he added, because Scripps Memorial and Scripps Clinic share a common corporate culture from their roots in the philanthropy of Ellen Browning Scripps.

The newspaper heiress established both the hospital and the research foundation jointly in 1924 but they split in 1946.