Three years after Billings Clinic cut the ribbon on its facility in west Bozeman, the health system announced with Bozeman Health on Thursday that the two plan to collaborate on expanded services in the area.

The announcement of the formal agreement between the two comes a year after a more informal move in the relationship, when Bozeman Health began leasing space in the Billings Clinic facility on Wellness Way. Billings Clinic staff have also worked out of Bozeman Health’s Deaconess Regional Medical Center for years.

The leaders of the two systems, Dr. Kathryn Bertany with Bozeman Health and Billings Clinic’s Dr. Clint Seger, kept talking over the last year and decided to make it more official.

“This is a great campus,” Bertany said Thursday. “Our care teams work well together, and we realized that although we want to remain independent Montana-based healthcare systems, that working together we could probably bring additional resources to expand access to both primary care and specialty care here in Bozeman that our growing community desperately needs.”

Billings Clinic’s campus occupies 58 acres in west Bozeman, just south of Interstate 90 and west of North 19th Avenue.

According to a press release, the two organizations will have equal ownership of the undeveloped land on the campus, and are looking into “ways to increase patient access in the outpatient clinical space and surgery center.”

There aren’t any firm plans for what the two systems might do with the undeveloped land, or when, but Seger said Thursday’s announcement allows them to start planning.

“There’s a body of work that starts now around the clinical services and the surgical clinical services,” he said.“Being able to get our teams together to really start finding those opportunities and synergies that we have where we can work together to to bring services, whether it be Bozeman Health bringing the services or Billings Clinic, but we can do that in collaboration. So really, we’re at the starting point of identifying all those opportunities.”

Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy lauded the news in a press release Thursday. Sheehy and his wife, Carmen, have donated to both health organizations.

“This new agreement will go a long way in achieving our shared mission of ensuring Montanans have access to the best care available when and where they need it,” Sheehy said in the release.

The collaboration goes beyond just the undeveloped land, Bertany said, emphasizing it’s also about optimizing their work and expanding services.

Bertany noted that though some might see the two as competitors — they see themselves as providing patients with more options.

“We want to assure that we are partnering to bring new resources that the community needs and not competing needlessly. That doesn’t serve the community,” Bertany said. “We want to make sure if there’s services that we need additional access in, that we’re working together to bring that to the community.”

Billings Clinic and Kalispell-based Logan Health joined forces in 2023 to create an independent health system that is governed by a single board.