LAPORTE, Ind. (AP) — Officials in a northern Indiana county plan to use money from the sale of the Indiana University LaPorte Hospital to try to improve the overall health of residents.
The (Munster) Times reports that a deal to sell an 80 percent stake in the hospital to Community Health Systems, a for-profit hospital system based in Franklin, Tennessee, was finalized Tuesday.
Because the community provided a third of the funding for the hospital built in 1972, $106 million in proceeds went into the newly created nonprofit Healthcare Foundation of LaPorte. Five percent of its assets, or more than $5 million, will be distributed every year.
LaPorte County ranked as the 75th healthiest of Indiana’s 92 counties in 2015, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation wants to make LaPorte one of the 10 healthiest communities by 2030.