Nobody ever said running a hospital was easy, but it shouldn’t be impossible.
Yet the trend line suggests that’s just what’s happening, not just here in Connecticut but across the nation.
As Obamacare whittles reimbursement rates, insurers squeeze the last nickel, and the state takes another nip out of the revenue stream, hospitals are finding it difficult to keep their day-to-day operations in the black and virtually impossible to raise the vast sums required for long-term capital programs.
As Greg Bordonaro reports on today’s front page, layoffs and program cuts may be on the horizon. That would be a tragedy for the community. Mergers and the resulting economies of scale seem the only answer.
So it is against that backdrop that the decision by St. Francis Care to join the for-profit Ascension Health Care Network of St. Louis makes sense. So does ECHN’s decision to go public in its search for a partner in this high-wire financial dance. The good news east of the river is that the Eastern Connecticut Health Network seems to have four interested suitors. That may be the most encouraging sign in a most dreary drama.
We fight against our knee-jerk instincts to say that moving from nonprofit healthcare to a for-profit model is bad for the community. In reality, it may be the only option.
Clearly our healthcare funding system is broken. It is both scary and somehow encouraging that private equity funds think they see a fix that justifies their investment. Everybody wins if they’re right — unless they create a new nightmare of delayed and withheld care.
There are a lot of steps and due diligence that have to happen before the St. Francis deal is complete. We hope all involved proceed with great care and that state regulators are on their toes. For many in the community, lives really do hang in the balance.
On a lighter note …
Sometimes the best decisions are the ones not made.
When the New York tabloids got excited recently and reported Gov. Malloy was working on bringing a National Hockey League team back to Connecticut, Malloy didn’t bite. It would have been easy to play to the old Whalers faithful and let them fill in the dots between discussions over the future of XL Center and the state’s quest to bring new business to Connecticut. He didn’t go there and it’s a good thing.
In the absence of hard fact, speculation runs to the New York Islanders trying to leverage Connecticut in the same way Robert Kraft and the New England Patriots leveraged Connecticut to get the new Foxboro stadium built. The Islanders need an upgrade from Nassau Coliseum and Long Island taxpayers aren’t eager to give it to them. What better way to sway opinion than raise the specter of exiting? And moving to, say, Stamford wouldn’t be too big a stretch.
Whether Malloy was too savvy to bite or cooler heads intervened before the idea gained traction, the resulting inaction is good. Let’s learn from the Whalers and the Patriots. With apologies to The Who, let’s not be fooled again.
