First Choice Health Plan of Seattle, which began serving its first members in January, said it is merging into a new company with Health First Partners and Health Washington.
First Choice has about 3,500 insured patients, and Health First Partners has about 4,500. Health Washington is a provider network owned by Swedish Health Services, Multicare Health System, Evergreen Community Healthcare and Stevens Healthcare. Health First Partners is owned by Swedish and Multicare.
``The idea of this consolidation is to reduce overhead and to attain a critical mass in a single company,'' said Gary Gannaway, CEO of First Choice. Gannaway will be CEO of the new company, which probably will be called First Choice.
He said the new company is being started with $7 million in cash from First Choice and will be controlled by its parent, First Choice Health Network Inc. That company is owned by 650 physicians and 10 hospitals in Washington. Swedish, Multicare, Evergreen and Stevens have minority interests.
