LORAIN — Community Regional Medical Center has formed a partnership with Tri-City Family Medicine.

The partnership will mean a Tri-City office will be located in a new facility that Community Health Partners, the hospital’s parent company, has planned for about 33 acres of land it recently purchased in Avon near the state Route 611 interchange off Interstate 90, said Charles Butrey, Tri-City’s medical director.

CHP President Edwin Oley said the hospital system is still working on additional plans for the land, for which it paid about $6 million.

Oley said the partnership with Tri-City, which has offices in Amherst, Avon, Elyria and North Ridgeville, will give the hospital a team of doctors who specialize in outpatient care.

Butrey said it also will give the doctors at Tri-City, who will retain day-to-day control of the company’s operation, access to CHP resources and facilities.

Butrey said the philosophy of the 16 family practice doctors and three specialists at Tri-City and their roughly 100 employees will remain the same as it has since the company opened in 1991.

“Take care of patients how you would take care of your family, and the rest falls into place,” he said. “We’ll still do what we do very well.”

Oley said while the doctors of the company will technically become employees of the hospital, most of the other workers at Tri-City will remain employees at the company.

A board comprised of representatives from both CHP and Tri-City will oversee the company’s operations and report to the hospitals board of directors.

The deal has been in discussions for about five years, but Butrey said he’s also talked to representatives from other health care systems as well.

Oley said the deal could be a model of what is to come in the future as the health care industry looks at cost-saving measures. Butrey said it’s even possible that the deal could allow Tri-City to expand its business and bring on more doctors in the future.

The deal goes into effect Jan. 1.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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