This is an update of some of the hospitals in the news either filing for bankruptcy, trying to recover from bankruptcy, working to maintain and stay open, and other drastic cut backs by those trying to avoid getting to the bottom with their algorithms for planning and projections, which we hope works. BD
In the meantime, we have insurers with extra cash cows like Blue Cross opening up Venture Capital Organizations to invest their profits, but it doesn’t appear that hospitals will make the list as they are looking for returns on money invested. 
BlueCross BlueShield Create New Venture Capital Organization
Sandbox Industries will be the responsible party to manage the 116 million dollar fund. Interesting that their first investment was an EHR/data integrator health service. The information management portion consolidates and integrates data through the HL7 format. They also offer services to other entities outside of healthcare to include banking, hospitality and others.
As areas keep expanding, first we had the Blue Cross Bank and now the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Venture Capitalists. This investment was 5 million so there’s 101 million left in the till, what will be next, wish we could just get the claims paid. BD
In the meantime we are seeing large institutions dropping clinical trial service, and smaller hospitals scrambling to get on the “hospital branding” bandwagon, but for some that option might be coming a little too late, as the branding that has already taken place has established major medical facilities in their own rights at present, so again, to do so now could be a little late in the game and it might be more productive to work with one of the major branded facilities at this point.
Mayo Clinic Says Goodbye to clinical services in the US
This also means some folks will be losing jobs as well. The unit has been in place since 1991 and has provided information on over 1,000 trials. This is just one more sign of how the face of the pharmaceutical business is changing.
Here’s the list of news for this week and unfortunately the related reading of past posts keeps growing. BD
LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSPITAL has stood at the northwestern corner of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, overlooking the harbor for 150 years, so its presence in the surrounding neighborhoods cannot be boiled down to a single anecdote. It has been there for births and deaths and the large and small crises in between: a case of a school principal with whooping cough, say, or a professor with a sprained ankle. Now it is the hospital that is in danger. Continuum Health Partners, the company that runs it, says the hospital is in deep debt and facing bankruptcy, and has sought to close its maternity and pediatric units, among others. For neighbors, the uncertainties are deeply unsettling: Will the hospital still be there in two months? If so, what will be left? If not, what will this corner of Brooklyn do without it?
Integra Hospital Plano LLC, the Plano rehabilitation hospital that opened about a year and a half ago with plans to be the flagship for a chain of rehabilitation hospitals, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Integra also filed bankruptcy protection for Integra Hospital Baton Rouge LLC located in Baton Rouge, La. and its affiliated Plano-based health companies — Integra Hospital Management LLC and Integra Healthcare Holdings Ltd.
The federal bankruptcy judge overseeing the bankruptcy filing of Physicians Medical Center Carraway dismissed the case this morning, saying there was not much more to do other than to allow the hospital's two secured creditors to liquidate the assets.
Physicians Medical Center Carraway filed for bankruptcy protection Oct. 20 and had all patients transferred to other hospitals two days later. Employees were paid for the time they worked, but most of the 1,000 employees lost their jobs on the day of filing.
The hospital, 14 miles (23 kilometers) north of Providence, is operating under a court-appointed supervisor, who’s seeking a buyer to keep the facility open.
“This is, by far, the worst I’ve ever seen in all the years I’ve been in business,” said Ronald Del Mauro, chief executive officer of West Orange, New Jersey-based Saint Barnabas Health Care System, which operates six hospitals and nine nursing homes.
Since 2002, Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc. -- parent company of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey -- has reported cumulative profits in excess of $1 billion. That represents a 41 percent increase over 2002 reported net income. Horizon also had accumulated $1.6 billion in reserves as of the end of last year.
During this same period, Newton Memorial Hospital has experienced steady declines in net operating revenue and a significant operating loss for 2007 in excess of $5 million and a projected loss for 2008 of the same magnitude. A perfect storm of state and federal budget cuts, unfavorable market dynamics and rising costs have contributed to these negative financial results.
HAMMONTON - The community around William B. Kessler Memorial Hospital must loan it $5 million by mid-January to keep the doors open, the once-bankrupt hospital's new administration said Wednesday.
Federal law requires each loan be $25,000 or more, said Brian Sacco, a spokesman for new chief executive officer Jim Rossi.
Rossi's marketing firm plans weekly announcements of fundraising progress. Leaders of nonprofit organizations in town, people who are no strangers to fundraising, said they're hopeful but skeptical.
ROYAL OAK — Beaumont Hospitals will eliminate 500 positions, cut pay to executives and salaried physicians and slow construction projects to help reduce costs as the hospital system expects to report a $22 million loss in annual revenue at the end of this year.
“What we’ve found is that hospitals are no longer recession proof,” said Ken Matzick, president and CEO of the hospital system.
Related Reading:
A comment from EMR Update, where the Medical Quack is syndicated...felt this was important to add here, right in the back yard of Washington DC.
ReplyDeleteIn my neck of the woods- Arlington, Virginia, 3 of the 4 hospitals have gone bankrupt. The only one left is going crazy trying to make it by forcing docs into earlier discharges, by having abusive medical record policies, and by trying to use their 2001 EMR for as long as it'll work.
They tried to buy into Siemen's EMR, but there was a specific discussion on www.histalk.com about how they (Virginia Hospital Center) have frittered $14 million to possibly lose it all. I'm not sure if it'll survive...
Al