Hospitals, unions bracing for this week’s auction

Larry Ringler, Warren Tribune Chronicle, August 1, 2010 The merger was billed as Trumbull Memorial Hospital's best chance of avoiding a takeover by a larger, outside hospital system so it could remain locally owned. But that's exactly what may occur this month as the Forum Health system formed by the July 1997 merger of Trumbull Memorial and Western Reserve Care System in Youngstown goes on the block Thursday. In what is widely seen as making the best of a grim situation, lead bidder Ardent Health Services, a for-profit system in Nashville, Tennessee, will try to seal the deal for nonprofit Forum for $69.8 million Thursday in the downtown Cleveland office of Forum legal firm McDonald Hopkins. ... Hospitals