hospital shake up

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

not sure of total y2k impact but check out story listed below. y2k mentioned in last sentence. interesting.

http://www.latimes.com/search/findcgi?action=View&VdkVgwKey=%2E%2E%2F% 2E%2E%2Fvol7%2FCNS%5FDAYS%2F990710%2Ft000061562%2Ehtml&DocOffset=9&Doc sFound=9&QueryZip=y2k&Collection=Hunter&ViewTemplate=search3%2E

-- corrine l (corrine@iwaynet.net), July 13, 1999

Answers

I couldn't get that to open. How about a title of the article?

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), July 13, 1999.

Did you really expect it to? Bogus!

-- sue (deco100@aol.com), July 13, 1999.

Article reproduced FYI below;

Saturday, July 10, 1999

2 Top Managers Are Out at St. John's Medical Center Health care: Cash-strapped hospital's head administrator is reassigned, and medical director resigns. By DARYL KELLEY, Times Staff Writer

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XNARD--In a sudden shift of top managers following months of bad financial news, the hospital chain that owns St. John's Regional Medical Center announced Friday reassignment of the hospital's top administrator and the resignation of its medical director. A terse, three-paragraph memo from Catholic Health Care West did not mention the reason for the moves. And hospital representatives would not elaborate. But the changes follow the hospital's closure of an acute-care wing in March to save money. Administrators said then that St. John's had lost money for the last eight months because of low payments by HMOs and a nursing shortage that forced the hiring of expensive fill-in nurses. Administrator Jim Hoss was removed immediately as top executive at St. John's, the county's largest hospital, and as chief operating officer at the Oxnard facility and its sister Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, according to a memo by central region President Daniel R. Herlinger in Santa Barbara. Hoss, at St. John's in Oxnard for two years, has been transferred to the regional office "to assist us with some special project work," Herlinger wrote. Hoss was replaced on an interim basis by Charles Padilla, a regional vice president in charge of human resources, communication and planning. Dr. Ross DiBernardo, medical director at St. John's for five years, has submitted his resignation effective Aug. 6. "Ross, as our first medical director, has made significant contributions to our organization," Herlinger wrote. "He was instrumental in leading St. John's in achieving four statewide quality awards these last three years." Hoss, DiBernardo, Padilla and Herlinger were unavailable for comment Friday. Local hospital officials said they didn't know what to make of the reorganization. "Nobody I've talked with has any insight at all," said Dr. Samuel Edwards, administrator of the Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura. "I'm not aware of any big financial crisis there at the moment. It is hard to get nurses, but it's hard for everybody." The odd thing about this shake-up, Edwards said, is that usually when there are big changes at local hospitals, the reasons are well known. "But there wasn't any commotion this time," he said. "There wasn't any big corporate meeting, and they hadn't been specifically discussing any new plan for the future." Edwards said he was particularly taken aback by the resignation of DiBernardo, a longtime Oxnard cardiologist. "He's a good man, a good man," Edwards said. "Something is funny here. But I'm not sure what." During his short tenure at St. John's, the folksy Hoss, who transferred here from Shasta County, had been forthright in his discussions of the hospital's financial problems. Supporters speculated that may have gotten him into trouble with superiors. After St. John's closed a hospital wing despite a record number of patients, Hoss said his hospital was struggling like so many others with the fiscal realities of frugal managed-care insurance contracts. The March shutdown of a 31-bed wing of the 256-bed hospital meant that some patients would be forced to go to hospitals in other communities, elective surgeries would be postponed and patients would back up in the emergency room waiting for beds to empty, Hoss acknowledged. That would tarnish an image St. John's has polished since 1992, when it opened a $110-million campus on Rose Avenue, he said. "It's a new world, a different world," Hoss said. "But I don't know how brave it is." The hospital wing was taken out of service because the hospital couldn't afford the double-time wages of temporary nurses and still make money, Hoss said. Overall labor costs per patient in the wing had risen above $800 a day, compared to typical patient costs of about $500, Hoss said. Even with the lower costs, St. John's had made only about 1% to 1.5% profit on operations, Hoss said. And during the first eight months of the 1998-99 fiscal year, the hospital lost money, he said. "Managed-are [insurance] providers pay us a fixed amount per patient per diem without any consideration of these extra costs," he said. "But the increased patient volume forces us to use the most expensive labor. So we've gotten squeezed." As it turns out, the financial performance of St. John's in Oxnard was not too different than that of the 47 other hospitals in the Catholic Health Care West chain, the largest in California. For the first time, the chain will lose money on operations for the fiscal year that ended June 30, said John Petersdorf, corporate vice president of finance in San Francisco. "We're anticipating an $80-million net loss on revenues of 4.1 billion" dollars, he said. The chain has been hard-hit by frugal Health Maintenance Organization contracts, he said, and by a flurry of special costs such as Y2K remediation.

Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

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-- ---- (xxx@xxx.com), July 13, 1999.


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