St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare recently laid out its financial position and plans for the future in a recent bond filing. About one in three admissions to a St. Louis-area hospital go to one of BJC's nine area hospitals, and this market dominance hasn't changed much over the last 10 years, said Chief Executive Steve Lipstein. Maintaining that position requires constant investment in new technology and new facilities, a strong physician referral system, and a profitable mix of patients, he said.
Bakersfield, CA-based San Joaquin Community Hospital is moving ahead with plans to open the only burn center between Fresno and Los Angeles. Hospital officials are recruiting doctors and other healthcare professionals and plan to affiliate with an existing burn center. The five-bed intensive care unit will cost $1 million, officials said.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering instituting a permanent, independent investigator to keep watch over the county's troubled hospital and clinic system. The proposal came a day after new disclosures about the level of incompetence among employees at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. The investigator job was proposed by Supervisor Gloria Molina, who said trouble at the Los Angeles hospital developed in part because officials with the county Department of Health Services kept problems secret from the board.
Days before he took office, new Grady Memorial Hospital CEO Michael Young decided to examine every check over $1,000 that the Atlanta facility had issued to vendors for one week in July. The massive hospital is a spending monster with hundreds of vendors, so there were more than 100 checks totaling upward of $1.7 million. Young hit upon checks that shocked him, such as the $100,000 one-week payment for temporary employees, including nurses and X-ray technicians. While it is not uncommon for a financial auditor to review spending this way, it is rare for a CEO to take on such a mundane, time-consuming task, experts say.
Humana Inc. has announced it expects to lose nearly 10% of its Medicare drug-plan enrollees at the start of next year because it bid premiums too high to win an allotment of low-income, government-assigned members. Humana shares fell nearly 5% to $41.75 in after-hours trading after it announced it would lose all of its 308,000 "dual-eligible" Medicare members. Such members are a source of instant market share for many of the companies that sell and administer the benefit.
Kokomo, IN-based Howard Regional Health System says it has cut the equivalent of 75 full-time jobs due to a decline in patients. Howard Regional officials said that it has cut a total of 95 positions since mid-July and that since last October it's left more 180 positions vacant through attrition. CEO James P. Alender said that the drop in patients had been expected, but the decline has been faster than the employee attrition rate.