Two Denver hospitals owned by HealthOne are now options for people insured by Kaiser Permanente Colorado, though their regular doctors won’t start seeing patients there until some time next year.

Kaiser announced Monday that HCA HealthOne Rose and HCA HealthOne Presbyterian St. Luke’s would join its network immediately. Kaiser also added four hospitals owned by CommonSpirit Health to its list of in-network options in September.

In an emergency, patients can go to any hospital and expect protection from surprise bills. For scheduled care, they have to either stay within their insurer’s network or risk paying a larger share of their hospital bills, which can run well into the thousands.

Patients insured by Kaiser can start using the two hospitals at in-network rates whenever they want, said Mike Ramseier, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado. Both hospitals are in-network for all services they offer, though they expect patients will gravitate toward Rose for obstetric care and toward Presbyterian/St. Luke’s for surgeries, he said.

“At the end of the day, it really is their choice,” Ramseier said.

Under Kaiser’s model, physicians employed by the health network care for patients when they get admitted to hospitals it partners with. Doctors will start gradually shifting to work at the newly partnered hospitals some time in the first quarter of 2025, Ramseier said.

The implications for some of Kaiser’s other partnerships remain unclear.

After Kaiser and CommonSpirit announced their agreement, Intermountain Health last month said Kaiser was slowly shifting patients and doctors away from its hospitals, though they remain in-network for now.

Intermountain recently sent a letter to patients treated at Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette or Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver that said Kaiser has “indicated their intention to eventually transition patient care away from Good Samaritan and Saint Joseph hospitals.”

On Monday, Ramseier said plans for where Kaiser’s doctors would work are still “evolving,” and that he couldn’t say whether Kaiser doctors would continue to see patients at Intermountain’s hospitals in the long term.