MGH-Duke LifePoint Impact on NMU

When Marquette General Health System (MGHS) announced on March 6 it had signed a memorandum of understanding to join Duke LifePoint Healthcare, a question began to ripple across campus: How does the change at MGHS impact NMU?

“We’ve just begun meeting with the MGHS and Duke LifePoint transition teams, so it’s too early at this point to get into details other than to say that the Duke LifePoint officials have made it clear from the start that the already existing relationship between MGH and NMU was a positive factor in their decision to move forward with the MGH deal,” said NMU President Les Wong.

Wong said that in the “very preliminary” meetings with Duke LifePoint, its team members have expressed an interest in the possibility of renting some NMU campus space for the new doctors who will be hired and wanted to know more about NMU’s health-related academic programs and research, and about Northern’s athletic and recreation programs, especially the United States Olympic Education Center programs.

“During the announcement, Duke LifePoint officials publicly stated that there is tremendous potential for collaboration with NMU,” said Wong. “They are impressed with the many joint efforts Northern already has with Marquette General. They expressed an interest to grow those and to explore other ideas. As the agreement between MGH and Duke LifePoint is finalized over the summer, more work on these proposals will be done and more details will become available.”

Wong said that a key component in some of the new efforts will be "speed to implementation."

“We’ve become known as a university that can kick into high gear when an opportunity arises and move a project along more quickly than many universities,” he said. “Some of the early brainstorming ideas that have been floated across the table would have huge benefits for NMU in a relatively short amount of time if we do our part to be highly efficient in helping them to fruition. Many universities simply cannot do that because their culture is so slow moving. I think NMU is more nimble than a lot of colleges and, in this case, we’ll need to demonstrate that. But if we do, the rewards could be significant to our students and community."