The Blue Island, IL, City Council has voted unanimously to give New York-based Falcon Investors tax breaks to redevelop St. Francis Hospital and retool it as a regional, for-profit medical center. The tax breaks would flow from a tax increment financing district set up around the hospital. Falcon is taking over the hospital from SSM Health Care, which announced it would close the facility because of financial losses due to treating uninsured and underinsured patients.
Massachusetts' major health insurers have reported lackluster results for the first quarter of 2008. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, for example, cited high medical costs related to the flu for its losses. Its HMO Blue health plan lost $41.7 million on medical operations, partly offset by investment income of $25 million. The company's other health plans lost $3.4 million on operations and earned $21.4 million from investments.
This summer, Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA will have to answer whether it is in the interests of consumers for a dominant hospital chain to swallow up a pretty good community hospital if the merger will raise prices but offer the prospect of improvements in the quality of care. That is the issue presented by a decision from the Federal Trade Commission and Virginia's attorney general to challenge to Inova Health System's planned acquisition of Prince William Hospital. The decision will determine whether the FTC can once again begin enforcing the antitrust laws in the hospital and health markets after suffering a series of adverse court rulings over the past two decades.
Getting care in China's disaster zone following a massive earthquake is a struggle. Hospitals, medicine, blood, needles, doctors are all in short supply after many hospitals were obliterated or rendered unsafe across the earthquake zone. Numerous makeshift care centers have sprung up on the front lines of badly damaged towns, and all are overwhelmed with injured still pouring in from hard-hit areas.
The board of West Bend, WI-based SynergyHealth, has agreed to affiliate with Froedtert & Community Health. The affiliation is expected to be complete by July 2008. Under the agreement, St. Joseph's Hospital in West Bend, West Bend Clinic, and SynergyHealth Foundation will become part of Froedtert & Community Health. The three healthcare systems together will have revenue of more than $1.6 billion a year and hospitals in the Wisconsin communities of Wauwatosa, Milwaukee, Menomonee Falls, Mequon, and West Bend. The agreement is part of a new round of consolidations among hospitals and physician practices taking place in the Milwaukee area and nationally.
Cleveland-based University Hospitals marked its strongest year ever in 2007, netting an operating income of $104 million. The amount is nearly four times the $28 million earned in 2004. The system also posted operating losses from 1994 through 2003, said University representatives. The biggest challenges for University Hospitals this year are likely to be uncertainties posed by a presidential election year and state budget shortfall, as well as continued progress on its strategic plan, the representatives added.