NOREEN: No rush to sell hospital
Some people in Colorado Springs are asking, again, whether or not the city should sell Memorial Hospital.
It was bound to happen after the city’s Sustainable Funding Committee recommended in August that city hall should “examine the options in more detail toward an end of changing the ownership.” The dialog begins Wednesday when the City Council meets with the hospital’s board.
Idealogues armed with flamethrowers are insisting that the city sell off its enterprises and in our town, these people have the kind of appeal that accompanies a populist rebel yell. After the recent passage of Initiative 300, enterprises were bound to get more scrutiny, and that’s not all bad.
Still, pragmatists now shed must shed emotions, don their asbestos suits and understand that the simple question of whether or not to sell the hospital system is the wrong question. The right question, which requires a more thoughtful answer, is what kind of health care do we want to have, and if we sell the hospital, how can we be sure we’ll have it?
For example, if the hospital is sold, would it still offer TRICARE for military members and their dependents? Would it still provide $50 million a year in indigent care? See, corporate hospitals must pay dividends to shareholders and there are certain kinds of expenses they like to avoid.
We don’t want the hospital awash in red ink, (Memorial isn’t) but most of us want to live in a town where some level of indigent care is available, right? Isn’t that one definition of compassionate conservatism?
“The reason we like this conversation,” said Memorial CEO Larry McEvoy, “is it allows us to begin to explore as a community those kinds of questions.”
Selling public hospitals isn’t new.
“Some communities have done it very, very well and some haven’t” McEvoy said. “It’s a complicated industry.”
The federal health care reform package, so far, hasn’t made it easier to predict the future for hospitals. Even in a slow economy, McEvoy acknowledged, hospital mergers and acquisitions have increased, but he added that corporate medicine “may not be the best thing for the patient.”
The Sustainable Funding Committee suggested that selling the hospital could net between $250 million and $400 million. The $150 million gap between the two numbers suggests that the committee has no idea of how to price a hospital — not a major sin, but it means the panel understands about as much about hospitals as you and me.
Some of the same voices that have flayed the city for its handling of lesser business deals seem to have full faith in City Hall’s ability to pull the trigger on this one.
Selling the hospital system? Only do it if it’s best for the community. Ignore the rebel yell.
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