This community opinion was contributed by George L. Fendler. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. BenitoLink invites all community members to share their ideas and opinions. By registering as a BenitoLink user in the top right corner of our home page and agreeing to follow our Terms of Use, you can write counter opinions or share your insights on current issues. Lea este articulo en español aquí.
It’s easy to reject someone’s decision and say it’s unworkable. What’s harder is to come up with alternative solutions that might be better.
Our hospital is having financial difficulties. That’s not news. Attending the board meetings and listening to community comments shows us that there are very few people who want the hospital sold. The board has considered several solutions and has narrowed it down to selling our entire healthcare system to Insight Health Systems. That solution, whether it will work or not, is very drastic.
Once Insight owns the buildings, land and medical equipment there is no going back. The only thing the San Benito Healthcare District will own is the debt!
We are fortunate to live in a nation that provides for self-rule. Abe Lincoln summed it up as the “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
So, people, it looks like it’s up to us. What are we going to do?
We need ideas. One way to produce ideas is to have public discussions or brain-storming sessions. We could gather in small groups with a moderator and a whiteboard and put up ideas. I have participated is such meetings that had very positive results. Mind you, most of the ideas get rejected as unworkable.
But, the surviving ones will often produce a genius idea. The groups should be limited in size—maybe 10 – 20 people. The best ideas from each of the groups would be presented at a larger assembly for consideration. That might be presented to the board as a letter with the idea that the board would discuss and seriously consider these options.
Some things that I have thought of:
- Look for sponsorship. Most of the professional sports organizations have
received significant revenue by allowing large corporations to sponsor their
stadiums. An example of sponsorship as applied to the healthcare industry is
the Zuckerberg sponsorship of the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma
Center. It might be a good idea to contact the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation and
discuss our situation with them.
Another funding source to consider might be Amazon. They operate a distribution center just south of the Hollister Municipal Airport. Amazon is building a humongous facility at the north end of the airport. These facilities provide key regional resources to the company’s distribution network. They also bring jobs to Hollister. It is possible that the Bezos Family Foundation or Amazon itself would be interested in having more local medical resources for their employees. - There are many pieces of our healthcare system. Some of these pieces like
radiology and surgery require some very expensive equipment. Because of
rapidly evolving technological innovations the equipment becomes obsolete
much more quickly than we would like. If we could find some company or
philanthropist to help out with a sponsorship, that could relieve some of the
financial pressure and allow our hospital to keep up with the newest technology. - In order to be a licensed hospital we are required to treat anyone who is
presented to our facility. Many people in our community have inadequate income
limiting their ability to pay for the services that the hospital provides. It is
important to identify sources to supplement the payments for those individuals
who are unable to pay.
Many lower income people use the emergency department as their primary
healthcare provider. Because of the overhead of operating an emergency
department, the cost of providing services to these people is significantly higher
than it would be if the care was provided by a primary doctor. I think that an
analysis of the procedures that are provided in the ER might justify having a
separate part of our facility that could deal with medical issues that arise. This
could relieve the pressure on the ER so that they can deal more efficiently with
actual emergencies. In other words, free up the time of the emergency
department staff by providing primary care physicians to deal with patients who
normally seek primary care in the ER. - Cost Accounting is a very important part of most businesses. In hospitals the need to know the cost centers is even more important. The medical billing discipline tracks procedures by assigning a Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code to each procedure that is performed. There is a relationship between Accounts Receivable (AR) and CPTs.
For example, I suspect that payment for a patient treated for a gunshot wound in
the ER has a lower chance of being collected than for a patient getting a knee
replacement procedure in the OR. If the CPTs that have a poor collection history
are tracked, we could seek other ways of funding those procedures.
By tracking the relationship of costs and collections between AR and CPT, we
can determine which elective procedures to promote and incorporate that into
both our staff and patient recruitment activities. - We could explore the feasibility of offering incentives to our current healthcare
professionals when they actively recruit personnel for positions that are desirable. - Because our county has so few doctors, many of the people who live here
have Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) in the city where they work. Those PCPs
make referrals to practitioners that they know in their locale. Simple procedures
that could be performed in our hospital end up being done out-of-town. That shifts the revenue that could be captured at Hazel Hawkins to Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Jose or Salinas. We need to build up a local following so that when people who move to Hollister and ask neighbors where to find a doctor/hospital their neighbors will be able to recommend local practitioners. Getting more Primary Care Physicians to relocate to the Hollister area (whether they are employed by HHH or not), will go a long way toward shifting the revenue to our county.
If you would like to host a brain-storming meeting send me an email and I will attempt to coordinate the events. If you want to attend one, let me know that too.
My email address is george@ihollister.net.
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