Passavant Area Hospital in Jacksonville has cleared all regulatory approvals and has become the fourth hospital to join Memorial Health System. Passavant officially became a Memorial affiliate on April 1.

The affiliation was given the green light by the Federal Trade Commission on March 24. Earlier, on March 11, the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved the proposal at its monthly meeting in Bloomington.

Passavant Area Hospital will be the seventh full affiliate of Memorial and the health system’s second largest hospital. The Springfield-based health system includes Memorial Medical Center of Springfield, Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital, Taylorville Memorial Hospital, Memorial Home Services, Memorial Physician Services and Mental Health Centers of Central Illinois.

“Partnering with Memorial better positions us to meet the health-care needs of our community as we adapt to national health-care reform,” said Janet M. Terry, Passavant’s board chairwoman. “There’s great value in maintaining our local relationships by affiliating with an organization that has shown a deep commitment to improving the lives of the people of central Illinois.”

Founded in 1875, Passavant Area Hospital has 900 full- and part-time employees and is staffed for 93 inpatient beds. It is fully accredited by The Joint Commission and earned status as a Magnet Hospital® – the highest honor a health-care organization can receive for professional nursing practice – from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 2009 and most recently in March 2014 when it earned a four-year redesignation.

Memorial Health System’s three hospitals in Springfield, Lincoln and Taylorville are staffed for 523 inpatient beds, and the health system employs 5,829 people. Springfield’s Memorial Medical Center has been a Magnet Hospital since 2006.

Memorial Health System president and chief executive officer Edgar J. Curtis said this affiliation will provide opportunities for both organizations to offer even greater access to health-care services to the citizens in the communities they serve.

“National health-care reform is requiring greater levels of partnership between communities,” he said. “We must think and work differently. By better coordinating care, we can simultaneously increase quality and reduce health-care costs for the people we serve.”

Memorial Health System has had a long history of commitment to the Jacksonville medical community, including the construction of a medical office building completed on Passavant’s campus in June 2013, which houses the offices of Memorial Physician Services-Jacksonville. The health system also operates a medical equipment retail store in Jacksonville, which is a joint venture between Memorial Home Services and Passavant.